


Testing, testing, 1 2 3

by caprigender



Series: Dangerous Decisions [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Technology, Dildos, Fingerfucking, Fisting, Mech Suits, Other, POV Second Person, Penetrative Sex, Present Tense, Reader-Insert, i think i kept the language vague enough that it could be vaginal or anal, tense might get wonky at times im posting this at midnight on insufficient sleep, ways you can die in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2019-08-19 15:47:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16537541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprigender/pseuds/caprigender
Summary: Being a human out in the wild wide galaxy is Hard, even with a state-of-the-art alien powersuit. Sometimes you end up on a ship full of alien robots. Sometimes you end up accidentally flirting with a robot who thinks it's hot when you kick his ass. Sometimes weird alien technology keeps turning up in ways that seem designed to make your life a living hell.It's got a plot, technically, but that's mostly a confused by-product of me trying to string together various snippets of porn scenes that I wanted to write.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> technically a sequel to my fic Under Pressure so if you haven't read that you might wanna pop over there first
> 
> there's probably inconsistencies with the human character's story between the two fics cause im just hammering it out as i go along and have not bothered going back and editing

The rhythmic clank of your mag boots against the hull is just as soothing as it always is. The soft hiss and hum of life support systems working normally calms your aching nerves as you tap across the vast expanse of empty metal desert. You had been worried that the fancy upgrade would mean that the sound effects you were used to would completely disappear, that in some misguided effort of alien benevolence the E.T. techs who made the suit would have made the thing so damn advanced that none of the mechanisms would make even a whisper of noise and you would be stranded in a sea of anxious silence. In space of course you know that true silence is the most dangerous thing you could ever hear. That silence is the sound of the vacuum. It’s the sound of the void that boils blood and bursts eyeballs. In space silence isn’t golden. Luckily the aliens who designed your suit seem to know this. It sounds like a symphony reimagined by a cityful of factories scaled down and lovingly tucked around you like bubble wrap. Or something of that sort.

The sounds are different from your last suit. They’re not inherently better or worse or anything, just different, but it makes you uncomfortable all the same. You’re not used to it and it feels like something is wrong. New suit nerves. You’ll get used to it eventually but until you do you can’t help but feel a little bit cranky at the new chirps and beeps of the notifications system.

You sigh and blink away your HUD menus. It’s relatively quiet and dark in your helmet as you tilt your head up towards the vast expanse of empty space. The sight is beautiful. Absolutely massively beautiful. And terrifying. In a moment you change perspectives on the scene. Out here in zero g you can easily imagine yourself hanging from the ceiling of a vast cavern with the void stretching endlessly below you. Your stomach lurches and your heart rate begins to pick up as your brain recognizes the shift and struggles to put these sensations into a pattern it can understand. There is nothing at all between you and the faint pinpricks of thousands of stars. Nothing, that is, except lightyears of inhospitable emptiness. You cannot help but feel very small and insignificant. Somehow this is a great comfort.

The growing nausea is less of a comfort. You push yourself a few moments more, staring in wonder at the stars as your head begins to spin and your stomach threatens to lose breakfast. Then you focus on the hull of the ship and tilt your mind the right way up. The Lost Light anchors you in place and keeps you from hurling out into the abyss. You’re definitely grateful for that.

You sigh and check the time but it’s only been eight minutes since you came out here and you can’t let all these sights and lights get in the way of your real purpose. You’re here to test some sweet new features. The manual to this new suit is dense and nearly impossible to get through but it’s solid tech and offers some exciting gadgets and stunts. (Odae instructions never seem to make sense, but damn if those gooey bastards aren’t technological wizards) You’d already searched out and memorized the sequence you wanted to try before getting into the airlock. Preparation really pays off.

The menu opens with a friendly chirp that makes your nose wrinkle in distaste. You remind yourself you’ll like that new sound eventually as you swipe through menu screens and scroll through options. Boop boop fwip.

A soft voice with a subtle accent you can’t quite place chimes in as you select one tree. “Locomotion options.”

You’re scrolling again to the light “bipbipbipbipbipbip” of a frankly excessive number of movement options zooming past. You can’t believe you actually have this many choices. You pick out the one you came out here for.

“You have selected a new feature. Would you like to re-”

You blink away the option. “Already read the manual, thanks.” The system gives you a cheery blip and the new feature flips on. There’s a new hum and your boots jolt and shudder in a way that twists your guts in terrified knots. But the hum holds steady and you aren’t floating off into space yet so it looks like everything is fine.

“Cling skates activated.”

You sway cautiously as if caught in a breeze. Then with a subtle shift in your foot position the breeze seems to catch your body and sweep you effortlessly away. Slowly, slowly at first and then picking up speed as you lean into the movement and let the skates take you where they want to go. You’re going faster than you can walk in mag boots. Then you’re going way faster than you can walk in mag boots. Then you’re pretty sure you’re gliding faster than you can normally run and your heart is racing again with excitement. You’re not a thrill seeker, not really, but it’s just so easy to find thrilling experiences out here so far from Earth. Everything feels dangerous and new and exciting and yes you’re terrified because it is genuinely terrifying but you haven’t died yet and that’s just fantastic.

That’s really what this is about, after all, just the joy of being alive.

The hull of the ship rushes by all around you. You think you should feel the wind against your face but of course that’s impossible. A small twist of your feet and you turn into a slow graceful wide spin. It’s almost effortless. You try other stunts, figure eights, hairpin turns, skating forwards backwards and sideways. You’re halfway through writing your name in cursive against the side of the hull when you notice that you’re no longer by yourself out here. You pull up short with a lurch. There’s a familiar silhouette on the horizon. It’s trouble approaching fast, too fast. Too fast for you to do anything about it now. He’s already seen you and there's a giant metal whirlybird between you and the nearest airlock.

Whirl waves to you as he approaches. He might be talking to you but sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum and you specifically did not give him your private coms. In fact, you haven’t even talked to him since the incident in the hallway and he hasn’t tried to make you, which strikes you as odd. Sure he’ll wave or call to you from across Swerve’s but he doesn’t chase you down when you make excuses and leave or just ignore him. It’s suspicious. You don’t know Whirl very well but you do know that subtlety and stability aren’t his strong suits. He’s dangerous and you’re out here alone together.

Normally you can handle danger. You’ve been handling danger for years now ever since the Odae oligarchs kidnapped you from Earth “for your own safety” and dropped you in the middle of a galaxy that views you as small, soft, and weak. You know how to take care of yourself when you’re hopelessly outmatched. Usually that means keeping your head down and not attracting the attention of unstable elements but it’s too late for that. You’ve already got Whirl’s attention and now you have to make a choice. You can continue sneaking around in the shadows of larger, safer bots and hope he grows bored of you; or you can assert yourself and hope he decides you’re not worth the effort. But all that is long-term, the immediate choice is even simpler. Are you going to run or fight?

You’re fast on the cling skates. If he was closer you might be able to zip by him before he knew what was going on and beat him to the airlock. He’s wearing magnetic clamps on his feet so he’s slower than he usually would be but he still might catch you as you pass by. Your HUD helpfully magnifies the view of Whirl’s claws as your eyes linger on the glinting metal. The suit’s security system notes them as a threat, along with the huge forward facing cannons on his chassis. Would Whirl shoot you if you took a wider arc around him or if you managed to dodge his claws? You have no idea. You doubt it but those guns are sending chills up your spine anyways. 

Could you skip the fly-by entirely? Maybe tunnel through the hull? The mech suits are meant for mining and geological survey work so it’s not impossible, but there’s probably no in-built tool that could make a you-sized hole quick enough. No, you’ll have to make it past him and hope that running doesn’t excite Whirl’s trigger finger… or… whatever the hell sets off those turrets. Thinking about that too much makes you feel weird so you blink away the security screenshots and pull up the systems menu again. You have an idea for an extra security measure but you’re going to have to buy a little bit more time.

You reluctantly send a ping out towards him and it takes him less than a second to notice it and respond.

“Hey there, meat bag!” His voice rings out through your helmet comms and you’re already regretting this plan.

“Um, hey…” you pause, not really sure how to continue. There’s nothing you really want to talk about with Whirl and loads that you really don’t. All in all, it doesn’t make for great small talk opportunities. “How did you know I was out here?”

“Brainstorm told me.”

That surprises you. Sure you told Brainstorm you were going out to test your skates on the hull but you’d meant the information for if Ultra Magnus came looking for you. “I see.”

“He thinks you should have more guns on that junk heap you’re wearing.” Ah, Whirl, blunt and to-the-point. It would be refreshing if he wasn’t also bad fucking news.

“Junk heap?” You ask, putting your hands on your hips in some kind of stubborn defiance. “Are those his words or yours?”

Whirl looks you up and down and doesn’t answer your question. You get the feeling he’s not paying attention to what you’re saying. “He’s right, you know. It’s dangerous out here for tiny organics. You need some firepower in that tin can and Brainstorm’s probably your best bet in the galaxy. He’s a fragging genius, but don’t tell him I said that. You should ask him for a setup like this.” He gestures at his chest cannons in a way that reminds you of sleazy late night cable ads and internet pop-ups on shady download sites. It’s a weird thing to make you feel homesick and flustered both at the same time. 

You let out a small cough and focus on the menus you’re scrolling through. “You think so?”

“Sure do. You really never know when you might need to blast someone to bits. Something as tiny and squishy as you? You’re gonna need all the help you can get. You really think you can run in the big leagues without any ‘choom choom kra-kow’ firepower? Please,” Whirl laughs, “you are way too easy to kill right now.”

There’s something so incredibly odd about this conversation. It almost sounds like he’s trying to help you in his own bizarre fucked-up Whirl kind of way, like he cares about your safety and doesn’t want you to die. Unlikely, and very weird if true, but that’s what it sounds like. “I think I’m a lot harder to kill than you think I am, Whirl,” you say and immediately wish that you had said something else, maybe something that didn’t sound like a fucking challenge.

“Yeah, you sure took a beating the last time we talked, didn’t you?”

Oh no. Your insides go cold and your face grows warmer. Is this worse than if he’d just tried to kill you? This might be worse than if he’d just tried to kill you.

“Pretty tough for a meat bag, I gotta admit. But that’s not saying a lot,” he’s close now, almost close enough for you to zoom by him but you’re still scrolling through menus for your back up plan. “Say, fleshy, do all organics have a thing for getting stepped on by bots or is it just you?”

Ok, screw this and screw the back up plan. You’re getting out of here right now immediately. You kick off with the skates and ramp up your speed faster than you thought you could. You’re aimed right at the airlock, which will take you closer to Whirl than might be smart but it’s too late to change course now. It’s hard to read but you think for a moment he looks surprised and then you’re zooming past his leg and out of his reach on a beeline for safety. You’ve switched off comms so you can’t tell if he’s saying anything, maybe yelling in frustration as you slip away.

The hull shudders behind you and the security system helpfully offers up schematics on the incoming threat. He’s chasing you, which is ridiculous because there’s no way he could ever catch up to you in those magnetic clamps now unless he-

The world tumbles end over end with the sound of shrieking and crunching metal reverberating through every inch of your armor. Your feet are wrenched from the hull of the ship as you and Whirl tussle and spin. You think that you’re about to die for sure, flung out into space and tossed around until your oxygen supply runs out and you suffocate. The next moment you’re slammed against the hull with a crash. Whirl has you pinned to the ship with a claw around your chest, looming in so that all you can see is his glowing yellow eye.

Your heart is racing. It’s pounding so loudly in your ears that you can barely hear the frantic hum of machinery trying to restabilize. There's a loud buzz as your cling skates come back online and secure to the ship. You can hardly breathe. You had misjudged Whirl. You hadn’t realized just how dangerous he could be, hadn’t realized he would abandon his mag clamps and risk his own safety just to… what? What the hell is he doing here after all? Is he trying to kill you? Humiliate you?

Your helmet chimes. Communications request from Whirl. You accept it because what else is there for you to do?

“Very nice, fleshy,” he says. His voice is buzzing with excitement like he’s fucking overjoyed at this situation. You’ve heard that buzz from other bots before, but never from Whirl. Something in your gut flutters and you pretend with all your might that it’s only fear. “If it wasn’t me you were up against you might have made it in time.”

“What do you want?” you hiss. That giant flashlight eye flinches back and cocks to the side.

“What do I want?” He asks and the excitement is gone. Now he sounds genuinely confused.

“Yes Whirl,” you snap, “What do you want? Why are you out here? Why are you bothering me?”

“Aw, come on squishy, you know what this is about. You got all revved up, meatbag. I didn’t know you organics could have the hots for bots like that but you do,” there’s something hesitant in the way he’s talking now, or maybe that’s just your imagination. “We could have some fun with that. I’m not completely grossed out by the thought of your hot sticky body inside that poor excuse for a bot form. And I get the feeling that there’s a lot more that you gotta learn to pilot that thing around.” He taps the tip of a claw against your helm and presses you down against the hull. The pressure meter in the corner of your HUD ticks. “I think it worked out for you last time. Sure worked out for me.”

So there it is, all laid out on the table like that and honestly you can’t think of a damn thing to say. It’s a little hard to process because again it sounds like Whirl is trying to help you and also maybe coming on to you. That’s confusing and makes no sense but if you’re going to suspend your disbelief long enough to believe that it’s possible then the obvious next thing to ask is why? You really do not want to be doing a deep dive into the methods and motivations of Whirl’s mind while tenuously tethered to the hull of a spaceship out in the reaches of deep space. That is just entirely too much for a single day. So instead you mute your comms mic and click through the last few menu options to your backup plan.

“You have selected a new feature,” the suit voice says, “Would you like to read the manual entry for-”

“Nope, no time.”

“Geological core sampler activated. Please review the safety protocols now showing on-“

“So, what’s it gonna be, fleshy?”

Mechanics shift and extend around your right arm, opening up for a tool you’ve technically never used before. The suit has instructions and safety protocols flashing in your view screen and you pay just enough attention to see which end you’re gonna point where. You squirm your way around under Whirl’s grip until you think everything is in place. You clench your fist around the trigger mechanism and fire.

The device makes a loud “clunk ka-chunk” noise that is drowned out by Whirl’s scream. It’s short, just a quick burst of pain and confusion as a cylinder four inches wide and two feet long is extracted from his wrist joint and shot out the other end of the sampler. Whirl jerks back and you’re free, firing up your skates and zipping off as fast as you physically can towards the airlock.

You really shouldn’t but you risk a glance back as you reach the edge of the airlock doors. Whirl hasn’t moved. Without the foot clamps he’s left only with the ones on his knees and the hold he has on the hull with his undamaged claw. He’s staring at the battered one, not even trying to follow you and something about that seems more dangerous than if he was tearing towards you with a fury. Safety once again becomes more important than curiosity. You throw yourself into the airlock and hit the cycle controls. The outer doors slide shut and the room begins to pressurize. You’re not really safe, not yet, but there’s a sense of security that comes with a set of sturdy doors between you and the endless void.

From now on no more space walk outings. From now on you stick to crowded, well lit areas. From now on you and Ultra Magnus might as well be joined at the hip and you are getting off this crazy ride at the very next planet, no exceptions.

There’s a soft chuckling sound inside your helmet. You squeak and spin around but there’s still no one in the lock bay with you.

“Holy scrap,” Whirl’s voice whispers in your ear and you realize that you haven’t closed comms yet, just muted your mic. You go to cut the feed but hesitate. It’s weird that Whirl hasn’t done it himself already, but maybe he just doesn’t know how? Or maybe he is talking to you, or at least means for you to hear this. No, there’s something about his tone that makes you think he doesn’t know you can still hear him. He’s never sounded this unguarded before. You wait in silence as the airlock continues to cycle, unsure if you should still be listening but also unable to make yourself shut it all down. Curiosity winning over self-preservation. You strain to hear something -anything- over the ambient noise of your suit and the slowly growing hiss of the airlock pressurization. You hold your breath and focus, as if it’s only a matter of personal discipline keeping your ears from picking up on hearing Whirl’s very thoughts and if you just try a little harder you’ll be able to know exactly what his plans for revenge are gonna be. There’s nothing and nothing and nothing and then, so soft that you aren’t even sure if you’re hearing it right you think you hear him sigh “Wow.”

The airlock beeps with the all-clear signal and the inner doors swing open. You’re out the door and halfway down the hallway before you know what you’re even doing. You’re running on instinct now, acting on all the plans you’d been making in the back of your mind while trapped. But somehow getting away doesn’t feel as urgent as it had back underneath the grip of Whirl’s talons. Something has changed, the sense of danger is much less if not gone entirely. Or maybe it’s that you just don’t care. 

That’s twice now that Whirl’s underestimated you. Or is it twice that Whirl underestimated the suit, or maybe it’s twice that he never meant to hurt you in the first place. Whatever it was, you can’t keep denying how all of this is making you feel. Your knees are weak and all this adrenaline is heating you up inside. You’re not a thrill seeker, but there is something thrilling about this weird and dangerous dance you’re doing with Whirl. Maybe it’s worth looking into. Maybe dangerous experiences are the only kind of experiences available for a human out here alone at the ass end of the galaxy surrounded by giant alien robots who managed to crush your home planet’s cities and armies into dust with barely any effort. But you’re still here, alive and breathing. You’re still here and this big scary metal bird is clearly interested in you in some way.

You’re not a thrill seeker, but there are far too many ways to die in space and there are things out here that are much more dangerous than Whirl. Maybe you should take some chances.

~

Whirl thinks he probably shouldn’t feel this way about getting his wrist jacked up. Normally he’d be pissed off, and he thinks he is pissed off but it’s more than just that. The joint is misaligned and it smarts like crazy. If he doesn’t go check in at the med bay to get it fixed now (which he won’t) it’ll probably hurt for a few more days and then something will snag and burst and the whole damn thing will be unusable until he gets it completely reconstructed. He’s pissed off and in pain and absolutely thrilled. He didn’t know a human could do something like that and you can’t get truly angry at a human that fucks you up this bad. That would be like getting angry at a snub-nosed little toy dog for trying to rip the throat off a tank and succeeding. It’s just too absurd to take seriously. You can’t get mad at the ugly little thing for doing better than should be possible. No, you just have to laugh and hope the crazy meat-thing is on your side next time. 

Whirl keeps checking the strange little hole in his wrist just to make sure he didn’t imagine the whole thing. He has no idea what messed up alien tool did this, but it wasn’t a weapon, he knows that much. And if this is the kind of thing you can do in a suit with no weapons well... Whirl vents a breath of steam with a quiet shudder. He cannot wait to see what Brainstorm eventually kits you out with. He can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it all.

The hallways are empty. Whirl spins around and holds his wrist up to the light, optic peering into the opening. The tunnel doesn’t go all the way through so he can’t see the light from the other side. It’s the same as the last three times he checked. Still, Whirl knows he’s probably going to check at least three more times before he even gets to the firing range. Got to have something to do. Bothering the human is a fun distraction, but he can’t be doing that all the time.

The firing range isn’t an actual firing range of course, it’s just a long low room no one was using that Whirl stuffed with junk to shoot at. It might have been used for storage at one time but people definitely don’t use it for storage now, or if they do they quickly learn why this is a very bad idea. He fires off a few rounds into the charred remains of an old packing crate. It blows apart with a satisfying sizzle.

He takes aim at another stack of rubble that he thinks looks kind of like if Cyclonus was having a bad day at a scrap carnival. He considers taking a picture before blowing it to bits when his communicator blips with a new message.

Whirl doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s obvious who its from. He stares at the message preview. He’ll get to it eventually, but first he wants to think of the perfect name to save in your contact slot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We see some more of your backstory, Ultra Magnus keeps popping up in my writing and maybe I need to examine why that is
> 
> and yes, this is the chapter where the rating finally changes

Whirl isn’t exactly what you would call a “good teacher” and you never expected anything different from him. Still, you have to admit that the past few days of him trying to help you have been… well, actually helpful. It’s not like any class you’ve ever been to and not like any experiment you’ve ever done. There’s no lecturing, no reading, no formal hypotheses, no real safety measures of any kind besides a trust in your armor. Whirl helping you looks like that video of British lads hitting each other with a chair, except that everyone involved has access to advanced alien technology. It’s a mess. It’s horrifying. And it’s possibly the most fun you’ve had in your life.

You’re learning things, too. No, really, scrambling around and choosing systems at random to respond to sudden claw-man ambushes has resulted in a lot of interesting discoveries. For example, the safety on your bolt-welder can be turned off very easily, the grotrium scanner emits an obnoxious blinding series of flashes when in use, and most cybertronians can’t feel when you use your cling skates to stick to them.

This trip started out as an uncomfortable accident in your efforts to hitch a ride to the Hoxrow quadrant, but you’re actually kind of enjoying yourself. The only one who isn’t pleased is the bot you accidentally guilt tripped into letting you on board in the first place.

You’d say that Ultra Magnus gives off significant Dad Energy, but your brain keeps autocorrecting “Dad” to “Father” and the stuffiness of it all makes the whole experience weird and unpleasant. Still, it’s clear that he cares about you, or at least it’s clear that he views himself as a protector and that a small human alone out in the big bad galaxy is an easy target to latch a protective instinct onto. You took advantage of those feelings, but in all fairness you hadn’t meant to. You had meant to take advantage of soft-and-squishy-solidarity instead. He’s the one who catfished you with his backwards baseball cap and his jean skirt and his holomatter squishiness. He’s the one who sought you out in that station the next day, decked out in full cybertronian metallic glory, and insisted on escorting you as far as you were headed. You know logically that you didn’t scam him into this or anything. Still, there’s something about Ultra Magnus that makes you feel like you’re always breaking the rules. 

That feeling is multiplied by the look he’s giving you as he takes in the new scratches and scorch marks on the plain grey plating of your armor. It’s similar to looks you’ve seen him give his crew: a kind of detached annoyance that you’ve allowed yourself to get scuffed and the assurance that this unseemly untidiness indicates deeper character flaws that will soon bloom into full blown character detriments. Just that disappointment would be terrible enough but you’ve been here long enough to recognize the edge of sadness and worry in his expression that you never see when he directs this look at a member of his crew. It’s patronizing and you’ve had enough patronizing looks to last for the rest of your life. You can’t even muster up the energy to be angry about it, really, it’s just so usual and expected.

“Wanderer,” his voice is low and loud and stern, “There was an equipment malfunction in loading bay 4. Your shuttle has been moved to loading bay 6 until the mechanism is repaired.” He’s so matter-of-fact about it that it takes you a few moments of silence to realize he expects you to respond.

“Oh, thank you,” you say, searching for words besides “I didn’t do it, I swear.” You clear your throat and try to speak steadily. “What kind of an issue?”

Over the course of the next few minutes you’re given a detailed report of exactly what happened in loading bay four. It’s not easy to follow but you gather that it has something to do with the atmosphere shielding part of the airlock system (more relevant for your squishy and air dependent form to be relocated) and is very definitely not your fault. You allow yourself to relax and nod along to Ultra Magnus’ assertions that the Lost Light takes the safety of their guests very seriously. You aren’t particularly worried about depressurization, to be honest, you have confidence in the lung systems of your suit. You’ve tested them before in the low atmo of asteroid mining, then again outside the hull of the Lost Light, and again just the other day when Whirl dragged you down to the bottom of the oil reservoir for something he called “sludge walking.” A spontaneous decompression would be something else entirely, but that’s a fate that could even be dangerous for cybertronians.

It feels like the conversation is wrapping up when he turns it on you again. “You’ve picked up some markings since I last saw you.” And just like that the guilt is back. Ultra Magnus, who very kindly took you in when you were stranded on Belmillon and promised you a ride out of galactic council space, had told you to stay away from Whirl for your own safety and you had lasted maybe half a week before throwing that (very sane very reasonable) advice in the fucking trash can. Slam dunk. 

“Huh?” You look down at your scuffed up plates as if seeing them for the first time. “Oh yeah, well, you know what they say. Can’t fix a broken thruster set without scorching a few hands and helms.” And now you’ve lied to him, or used a misleading folksy saying which is just as bad in Ultra Magnus’ eyes.

“Your shuttle’s thrusters are malfunctioning? I was unaware the technology was ignition based.”

“Uh, no, it’s just a figure of speech.”

“I see,” he grimaces, “I admit I’ve never really gotten the hang of such things.” The silence between the two of you stretches out. You suppress the urge to ask if you are being detained. You try to convince your pounding heart that you are not in trouble.

“Ultra Magnus, sir.” You tense at the unexpected voice behind you and check your sensors. Some bot you don’t know by name, you should have been paying better attention. What’s the good of being on edge if it isn’t making you more vigilant? 

“Swipe.” The bot stops next to you and hands Ultra Magnus a datapad.

“You’re needed on the bridge, sir.”

Ultra Magnus nods to him and then turns to you. “I trust I will see you again in one piece.” You feel your face heating up in embarrassment but you just nod back at him without a word. He doesn’t smile. You can’t tell if he’s pleased with your response. But it doesn’t matter because he walks away, following the other autobot where he’s needed. You wonder how his footsteps aren’t shaking the floor you’re standing on.

~

“Hey there, followers! It’s your gal, Terminatrix Rex, back at it with another suit hack video!” The screen above your work bench chirps and flashes with Terminatrix Rex’s theme music as you settle in to polish the scuffs off your armor. It’s going to take a lot of time and you’ve gotta have something going on. There’s a lot of archived humans spread out across the galaxy and a lot of them have their own vid channels and streaming sites but Terminatrix Rex is probably your favorite. She specializes in Easter eggs and suit hacks, finding hidden uses for included features or modifying included features for new uses. Put more plainly, she takes a suit of armor meant solely for protection and she makes it deadly. It’s a skill you’ve been trying to hone recently. You figure you should take all the help you can get. Also, she’s very charismatic. 

You haul the breastplate of your suit up onto your lap and reach for your toolbox as Terminatrix chats on about modifying a bolt welder for a longer range. You feel naked without the armor on. The packages you get semi regularly from your alien sponsors keep you dressed comfortably enough but switching into sweats and a tank top feels too vulnerable after a day of wearing what amounts to a fashionable tank. You tell yourself that you’re just as safe inside your shuttle as you would be in your armor. You tell yourself that the walls are strong in a way the suit couldn’t compare to. You tell yourself that there’s nothing to fear here anyways, you’re absolutely entirely safe.

Almost as if in response to that last thought, there comes a loud banging on the roof of your ship and muffled mechanical yelling through your door. For a second you’re frozen in place, waiting for the crunching and tearing sounds you’re certain are only a few moments away as whatever the hell is making those sounds bores through the layers of space-worthy shell surrounding your living space. The crunching doesn’t come. Instead, the banging and yelling continues on and off. There’s cameras and sensors for security set up all over the outside of your ship and if you’d been wearing your helmet you could have them screened directly in front of your face. But your helmet is powered down on its stand so instead you’re scrambling to your feet and through the door to the security station in the other room, pushing buttons as you go. 

You peer at the screens, unable to make out what’s causing all the racket. Most of the cameras aren’t picking anything up that looks out of the ordinary, just a normal shuttle dock, mostly empty. The cameras nearest the door are blocked but you can’t see what by. It’s nothing but blurry jagged geometry for a while, moving and confusing, until..

You yelp and jump back as the main door camera screen is suddenly filled with an unfocused shot of a single golden eye. The abstract nonsense on the other cameras begins to fit into place as a warped portrait of the most memorable helicopter in your life. You sigh and feel yourself begin to relax.

“What are you doing, Whirl?” You ask through the shuttle coms.

“Meatbag!” Whirl’s voice crackles through the speakers, loud and distorted. “Heard you had a change of scenery. Hope they remembered to keep the right side up on your little cargo box.” The eye tilts and disappears as Whirl inspects something just out of frame. 

“I’m fine. You wanna tell me what you’re really here for?”

“What, I’m not allowed to visit a friend?”

You raise an eyebrow at the screen. He’d never called you his friend before. “Is that what we are, Whirl? Friends?”

There’s a pause and you wonder if you’ve pushed a button you shouldn’t have. Whirl continues as if you hadn’t even spoken. “I found something in storage. Bet your corpse suit can’t take it apart.”

Ah, so this was that kind of night. Whirl was bored and wanted a buddy in destruction. You glance over your shoulder at the scuffed and bruised armor sitting on its stand. It looked lonely and empty with its chestplate missing, kind of like a scooped out container of ice cream or a hollowed out tree, if you wanted to get all poetic about shit. Doubtless if you went out tonight it would end up wrecked even further. It would take you more than just an evening to clean everything up afterwards. So you could spend the night polishing this second skin of yours, putting care and concern towards the way the others of the galaxy saw you and investing in the public image of the entire scattered human species, or you could scuttle off to tear apart garbage with a sketchy and dangerous alien robot who still may or may not want to crunch you to death with his claws. You stare at your armor, trying desperately to make a choice that you know should be very easy for you.

“Give me a minute to get dressed, I’ll be right there.”

~

“Ok, that thing is weird.”

The weird thing that Whirl found looks like something you might get from one of those capsule gumball machines if they were sized for a titan and left out to sprout a few metal palm trees. The outside is flat matte grey, a darker and cooler shade than your armor suit, but there’s something about the seams that makes you think it opens up and you can’t guess what color the inside might be. There’s a trail of scratches on the floor leading away from it. You guess that Whirl probably dragged it here from storage compartments unknown. It’s bigger than you are. It’s probably bigger than your capsule hotel of a shuttle, but maybe not by much. You have absolutely no idea what it might be and that troubles you.

“What is it?”

“Dunno.”

“You don’t know?”

Whirl shrugs. “Well it’s weird. We know that much.” He bashes a claw against the top of the Weird Thing. “So, what do you think, fleshy? Can you tear this thing up?”

“I dunno if this is a good idea. You sure this thing isn’t alive? Or dangerous?”

Whirl blinks at you. “Alive?”

“Aren’t those transformation seams or something?” You wave frantically at the lines and Whirl crouches down to look.

“So... what? You think this thing might be cybertronian?” His tone says that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. Looking at the Weird Thing, you kind of agree with him. There’s nothing about it that looks like Whirl, or his crewmates, or anything else you’ve seen on this ship. This thing is definitely alien to both of you. Still...

“I’m just saying that I remember a time when cars didn’t have hopes and dreams and helicopters never gave me sass,” you say, “Who knows what this mess might end up being?”

Whirl considers this. “Well, if it’s alive I’m sure it’ll say something when we start removing the important bits. Where do you wanna start, fleshy?”

Your hud notices your heart rate increase. “Are you kidding me? We can’t destroy it now. We need to turn it in to the authorities or something.”

You can actually feel the sneer that would be on his face, if he had a face. “Tell the authorities? Geez, fleshy, I thought you were fun.” Whirl clamps a claw onto something that might be a shingle or it might be a side fin and begins to pull. He’s really gonna keep doing this. He’s going to break this thing. It might have some kind of automated defense system. It might shoot you. It might explode. If it’s alive it might fight back or cause a diplomatic incident or something. In the back of your mind you hear an echo of Ultra Magnus warning you against “unnecessary risks.” It’s way too late for that but maybe you can mitigate some of the damages. You move against Whirl, swinging around with a solid punch to his stomach (waist? Midsection? Do robots have stomachs?) that knocks him back off his feet.

You only have a split second to contemplate how quickly you decided that violence was your best course of action and what that might say about your journey so far and the effect of the wide wild galaxy on your personality. Then Whirl is on you. He scoops you up in his claws and bashes you against the side of the Weird Thing. Your hud flashes with neon status updates. Blunt force trauma sustained. Checking plate strength. Checking sensors. Checking mechanics. You ignore them all and swing your leg up to kick the underside of his cockpit (his chest? Fuck robot anatomy.) He doesn’t flinch but his grip weakens enough and you twist out of his grasp, dropping to a crouch on the floor. You dash through his legs to buy yourself more time, scrambling to equip your hammer fists as fast as you can. You’ve done this before. You know what you’re doing.

He’s on you again and you barely have time to get your guard up. You duck. You block. You dodge. You take hits that would crumple a bus. You deal hits that would shatter concrete. You’ve done this before but it’s different right now, urgent in a strange sort of way. You wonder if maybe all those times Whirl had been holding back. He sends a claw your way that catches you and scrambles your hud for a second but you still manage to catch the second claw and turn it away with a twist and pop. You wonder if maybe you had been holding back, too. 

Whirl lunges for you again and you see an opening. His footing is wrong, unstable. You’re switching tools as you sweep his legs, landing him flat on his back with all the floor shaking that implies. It only takes a single tap of your bolt welder and Whirl’s leg is locked in place, bent up and stuck to the gun on his chest. And then you have the corer to his hip joint and Whirl goes very still.

“It’s set to take a bigger chunk this time so you better stay put if you want to keep your leg.” Whirl does not move. Good. You hope he’s taking your threat seriously. You hope it’s a big enough threat. Your breathing is slowly returning to normal. The two of you are frozen in place and you’re almost afraid to speak in case the added weight of your words might break something delicate about this situation. But you have to speak. You have to say something.

“We’re not going to destroy this thing, ok? We’re going to turn it in because it’s alien tech and that’s a threat to ship security and you know it.” You grind your fist and the corer harder into Whirl’s hips joint for emphasis. “If I let you go and you try to destroy this thing again then I will take you apart, piece by piece, and dump you in the oil lake. Do I make myself clear?”

Whirl gazes down at you, neck craning around his cockpit. His expression is unreadable, but you notice that the almost sneer is completely gone. “Crystal.”

Threat now received, you’re not sure what to do with yourself. Your fist is still pressed up against Whirl’s hip joint, his leg still thrown up, almost over your shoulder. It’s awkward and mildly suggestive and you’re not sure how to get out of it. It’s only going to get worse the longer you wait. You search your brain for a cool way to disengage from this whole situation but you’re coming up blank.

Whirl shifts his hips. “Has anyone ever told you how hot you are when you’re threatening violence?” His tone is mockingly seductive and you realize that you’ve missed your window to cooly throw him off. Your mind is racing to find new options when there’s a new mechanical grinding sound and Whirl begins to open up.

You didn’t expect to see a robotic dick today, but that appears to be exactly what you’re looking at. It’s surprisingly human looking, considering how the rest of his body is set up. You might have expected something strange and unrecognizable to match the spindly, multi-jointed legs and massive, twisting claws, but it’s definitely a dick, no mistakes there. That said, you’ve never seen a dick this big before. It lolls out across the join of his hips, metal plates shifting and flexing, almost as long as your arm and too thick to wrap one hand around for sure. It’s soft teal and grey in stripes and patches and you think you might see tiny blue lights flashing somewhere in the interior but you can’t be sure.

It’s a ploy. It’s an invitation. It is very tempting.

“What are you waiting for, fleshy?” Whirl asks. “Feeling shy? Go on, it won’t bite.” It’s a challenge. You can’t rise to the bait. You force yourself to stay calm and cool. Just keep pretending like everything is normal. You’re a cool carbon-based cutie who travels the universe in style. You’re cosmopolitan. You’re experienced. You’ve seen more robot dicks than you can count. And if you haven’t…. well, Whirl doesn’t need to know that.

“Is this what you think I want?” You ask, keeping your voice carefully neutral because, if you’re being honest, your heart is racing and you think you might want this very much. But, even more than that, you want to watch Whirl squirm. He shifts as if he’s about to move away but stops himself. He thought he knew what was going on but now he’s not sure. 

You shift back, releasing the pressure of the corer against his hip. Whirl relaxes for a second before the heel of your boot comes down to settle in the valley of his other hip joint. You nudge his dick with the toe of your boot and notice a slight shudder run through it. You look up at the glowing golden eye watching you.

You hold his gaze as you reach for him. One second. Three seconds. Five seconds. Your hand closes on the tip of his dick and Whirl’s eye slides shut. His whole body shudders. Steam vents open and shut with a soft hiss and clink. His hips shift again and he presses up into the palm of your hand with a soft groan. Oh yes, this is definitely what you wanted. You wanted the tremble in his thighs as your hands move down his shaft, and the unsteadiness in his position as he tries to keep looking at you, and the way he’s finally stopped talking and keeps trying to muster up some more sass to throw at you but can’t seem to do it. You’re getting everything you wanted and more.

Whirl’s dick flexes in your hands as you work up and down his length. Panels click and shift together in a weirdly mesmerizing way, metal and wire behaving almost organically. The sensors in your gloves are picking up slight energy readings that spike and dip as you go. You press a thumb into a seam and Whirl cries out with a jolt, a hazy happy static undertone in his voice.

“That’s right, blood bag. Just like that… frag, I’m gonna-“ There’s a new series of clicks further down and then you see it. A seam opens up under the base of his cock and, weirdly enough, you recognize what seems to be hiding under there, too.

“No fucking way,” you trace your fingers down along the new opening. Maybe you should have done your research before getting intimate across species lines, but you seem to be lucking out anyways because you’re pretty sure you know exactly what to do with this set up. You keep a steady slow tempo stroke going on his dick and gently probe with the fingers of your other hand. Whirl whimpers as you dip and retreat, dip and retreat. Your fingertips come away glowing blue green, sensors sparking wildly. You move back in. Slowly you slide in deeper and deeper and when you finally bottom out, pushed up flush against the warm metal of his body, you curl your finger and pull back.

There’s a hiss and a clang as Whirl throws his head back and moans. You can see him squeeze and flex around your fingers and you wish you could really feel him without the fear of his cunt crushing every bone in your hand. His hips jerk again and you brace against the movement. He’s gone, so far gone, and you’re just hitting your stride. Every inch of pleasure you manage to pull out of him fills your gut with butterflies. Every moan and thrash is a personal fucking victory and you just keep winning and winning and-

Whirl tenses and cries out, grinding up hard enough to lift your heels off the ground. Soft blue green lights flash in time with the pulsing around your fingers. Your hud blinks. The sensors are picking up energy spikes, one right after another, a descending staircase mirroring the way Whirl’s body continues to move. You’re hesitant to say, given the wide difference between your species, but you think you just witnessed a robot orgasm.

It takes a moment or two before Whirl gathers himself enough to speak again. “Damn, fleshy,” he gasps, “you sure you’ve never done that before? You’re a natural.”

You smile and wipe your hand off against the inside of his thigh. The glow leaves streaks that fade from view almost instantly. “Who said I’d never done this before?”

Whirl sits up and cranes his neck down at you. “Really?” He doesn’t sound upset, just interested. You shrug. “Who with?” His curiosity is going to ruin this cool casual persona you’ve just invented for yourself so you get up and turn back to the ultimate source of all this madness.

The Weird Thing is right where you left it, sitting there and defying explanation. The question now is what to do with it. Someone is going to have to tell Ultra Magnus. You would prefer if that someone was not you. Turning up in conjunction with something as unregulated as a potential alien threat would be enough of a blow to your standing in his view, you don’t need to make it worse by turning up with Whirl on your heels. You’ll have to take it to someone else.

“Do you think we could drag it up to the labs?”

“Huh? Ugh,” Whirl groans, “are you still talking about that hunk of scrap?”

“We have to do something with it,” you insist.

Whirl waves a dismissive claw in your direction. “I dunno about this ‘we’ thing you’ve got going on here. I never agreed to help you.”

You gaze at the Weird Thing, trying to figure out the angles and how you might be able to move it by yourself. “Hm, that’s too bad. Anyone helping me out with this deserves orgasms. But if it’s just gonna be me-“

There’s a snap behind you as Whirl leaps up. He’s cracked off the gun bolt-welded to his knee in his scramble to grab the Weird Thing by the palm tree bits. “What are you waiting around for, fleshy? Let’s get moving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've accidentally written myself into a plot. fuck. im so sorry yall.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys it’s so late I’m so sorry please forgive me my incoherence I hope you like what I’ve done with the mess

Inconclusive. That’s what the Nerd Squad had come up with so far. Tests on the Weird Thing were Inconclusive except that it was definitely alien technology. Perhaps you had gotten your hopes up that a Weird Science explanation would solve all of your problems. Perhaps that was a bit unwise but that’s just the way it is sometimes. At this point you’ve gotten so used to being the least qualified person in any given room that the idea of highly advanced robot scientists not being able to immediately answer any questions you might have (usually in some fashionable shade of patronizing and condescending) is as unexpected as it is uncomfortable. Still, there’s nothing you can do about it except wait patiently and hope that soon enough they’ll come to some conclusions.

In the meantime, you find yourself keeping promises.

18 thousand pounds of living metal presses down against your chest. Your sensors spike and chirp and the numbers dance before your eyes. Whirl thrusts with a force that would snap your spine in half and smear your blood across the hallway if you weren’t all wrapped up in a shining metal insurance policy. It’s rough. Whirl is always rough with you and it’s so different from how you’ve been treated by everyone else. There’s no kid gloves, he doesn’t act like he’s afraid he’s going to break you. That might be because he knows how tough you are, or it might be because he doesn’t care. Maybe he knows you can handle his full weight bearing down on you as he desperately dry humps you into the floor. Or maybe it wouldn’t bother him if you died here. Maybe he would feel your bones shatter and hear you scream and he would just keep going. You don’t know for sure. 

Whirl twists his hips, grinding his dick against the carapace of your armor and lets out a deep moan. You struggle to keep a firm hold on him. He thrusts again and there’s a crunching scuffing sound as the force of it drags you across the hallway floor. You always seem to end up doing this in side corridors and storage rooms. If Whirl does have his own room on the Lost Light, you’ve never seen it. You shift your grip and jets of steam vent off his form while Whirl positively whimpers.

You look at him towering above you, somehow so absolutely wrecked by whatever small friction you’re giving him. You flicker between fear and satisfaction, nausea and adrenaline and arousal swirling together in a disorienting cocktail of horny confusion.

Whirl’s hips stutter and jerk and he crumples down on top of you. The vertigo of looking up at him transforms into flinching reflexes against being crushed to death, but there’s nothing you can do to get out of the way. He collapses into you and around you, still whining from exertion. At least when he comes he doesn’t get you all sticky.

An icon flashes in the corner of your view screen. Your battery charge seems a bit higher than it was a few minutes ago. Weird. You’ll have to look into that later. You can never be too cautious when it comes to suit malfunctions.

~

On your first day in shuttle bay 6 the power went out and you had to make your way back home in the eerie dim glow of the emergency lights system. On the second day, the other shuttle in the dock sprang a plasma leak that crept close to your front door but wouldn’t have done much more than get your feet wet if you weren’t careful. The third day there was another power failure, followed by an atmosphere glitch and an ear splitting noise over the loudspeakers that ended up being a loose wire in the sound system or something of the sort. A few days later, the artificial gravity was cut off for two whole hours. By now, with the third power outage in a week darkening your doorstep, you have to admit the obvious: someone on the ship is messing with you. 

Ordinarily you might suspect Whirl. Unfortunately, Whirl has a string of solid alibis. But if not Whirl, who else would be doing this to you? Swerve has a reputation as a practical jokester, but you doubt these could count as practical jokes, even by the weirdest standards. Brainstorm, Nautica, and Skids are all smart enough to be able to cause these issues remotely, but what motive would they have to make you feel nervous and unsafe? 

Perhaps that’s the key instead, you should be thinking about who might want you off- kilter and uncomfortable. Whirl gazes back at you in your mind, fixed and unblinking until your stomach is tied in knots and you have to force yourself to concentrate on the tiles beneath your feet. It’s not Whirl. You know it’s not Whirl. Maybe there’s someone else on the Lost Light’s crew, someone who doesn’t like humans and might have a problem with you hitching a ride. If there is, they’ve managed to keep these opinions a secret from you at least. Still, it’s a starting point and it’s more than you had a minute ago.

You pull up short as a new thought hits you. If you’re right about this mildly-paranoid theory you have and there’s someone on this ship targeting your living area, what exactly might be stopping them from just targeting you directly? Currently, here in the middle of this hallway, the answer is no one.

“Heart rate elevated. Oxygen intake increase.” The suit murmurs in your ear. A breeze of canned air ruffles your hair. You close your eyes and slowly breathe it in, forcing yourself to stay calm. There is no reason to believe that whoever is doing this will not just continue their petty grievances against your home-away-from-home shuttle bay. In the meantime, you should find someone to stick around with, just in case. Someone large and intimidating. Maybe some kind of authority figure who definitely wants you here because he personally offered you the invitation.

You turn on your heel and head back towards the elevator, on the quickest route to Ultra Magnus’ office, your hud beeps and blips as it calculates route efficiency. It’s not the ideal situation. Ultra Magnus is still an uncomfortable presence on a normal day, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. You’ll have to think of a cover story for why you need to be by him. He can’t know that you think someone might be harassing you. He certainly can’t know that you think it might be another cybertronian. That would definitely lead to some sort of diplomatic incident and a diplomatic incident is the last thing you need to deal with in your life right now.

You click on your cling skates and zip around the last few corners to the elevator just as the doors open. You swerve just in time to avoid Velocity stepping out into the hallway. Your skates buzz with the strain and you come skidding to a halt halfway up the opposite wall. The cling function keeps you there, hanging almost in mid air as Velocity blinks at you in surprise. You give her a sheepish wave and she laughs.

“You seem to be going somewhere in a hurry.”

“Sometimes a hurry’s the only way to get anywhere, Velocity.”

“Wise words from someone so young.”

You shrug, “What can I say? The shorter the lifespan the faster you learn.”

Velocity hums as if you have just made a very clever point. “It’s actually lucky that we ran into each other, I have a message for you,” she says. She’s all smiles when she says it and you hope that means it’s good news. “Nautica thinks they’re close to figuring out where the tech pod might have come from and what it might be doing here on the ship.”

That is good news. “Oh yeah? What is it?”

“They think it’s some kind of transponder, but it’s not sending out any signals or data the way that it should be. They aren’t entirely sure why. Nautica wanted to wait until they have more information before telling you, but you seemed so anxious when you brought the thing in. I thought you would want to know anything as soon as possible.”

It’s sweet of her. Very thoughtful. It also means that, despite all the armor you were wearing when you and Whirl had dragged in the Weird Thing for study, she had been able to read your moods pretty accurately. You hadn’t expected that. Maybe this mask wasn’t the emotionless shield you thought it was.

“Cool. Uh, thanks.” You’re not sure what else to say to her and so the two of you stand there, facing each other in a moment of awkward silence. “So,” you nod to the elevator doors behind her, “are you going up?”

“Hm? Oh, yes actually,” she checks the level number in the hallway and the tablet she’s holding, “I keep getting all turned around.” She gets back in the elevator. “Where are you headed?”

You do some quick mental calculations. Velocity is probably not a person who hates you. She’s probably not a person who would like to attack you. You hop down from the wall and zip in next to her. “Main level.” She presses the button and the two of you relax into the comfortable awkwardness of a shared elevator ride.

Except, a moment or two into what you expect to be a quiet ride, she begins making small talk.

“You and Whirl have certainly been close lately.”

“I guess we have,” you peer at her through your viewscreen. “He’s actually been really helpful to me, but don’t tell him i said that.”

“Oh, I’m sure. Blowing off steam is very important.” she pauses and considers for a moment, “Do humans even have that idiom? Blowing off steam?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it before.”

“Fascinating.” She glances at you like she expects you to keep the conversation going but you’re not exactly sure what she wants to hear. Eventually she sighs and continues in a tone that is struggling to be professional. “Listen, I don’t want to be rude or condescending here, but I am a medical doctor and I want to make sure you’re safe.” You turn to look at her. She meets your gaze with a doctor’s “don’t worry, it’s not terminal” kind of smile. “Are you aware of cyber-organic safe sex practices?

“Um?!”

“Because Whirl doesn’t strike me as,” she pauses and makes a face as if she’s trying to find a more polite way to say something, “He doesn’t seem like the kind of partner who would be pro-active about making sure you have that information.”

“UM?!”

“Oh, I’ve done this all wrong. I’m sorry I know this is awkward but-”

“Who told you that Whirl and I were having sex?

She blinks and the last bits of professionalism evaporate, “Well, no one, but the two of you came in with that transponder and your gloves were almost glowing with energy residues. I just assumed it was Whirl, I’m sorry. Was it someone else? Wait, no, that’s none of my business.”

Energy residue. You groan and lean back against the wall. Of course the no-mess no-cleanup sex had been too good to be true. “How many people know?”

“I- well, it’s hard to tell who notices these things. No one’s optics are calibrated to exactly the same frequencies, you know.” You don’t know, of course. You’re still reeling. But at least Velocity seems to be on firm ground again, back in a medical professional mode rather than a sex-gossip kind of mode. “Look, I’m not even sure if this is something you’re interested in but just in case” she rummages around in a compartment and brings out something familiar looking.

“Is that… a robot condom?”

“It’s a localized mass displacement device,” she explains, “it’s for couples with size disparities that would make penetration uncomfortable or impossible. They were originally made for minibots but they’re effective for organics as well.”

“And you... just have these with you wherever you go, do you?”

Velocity gives you a sheepish smile. “I might have been carrying them around in case I bumped into you.”

Why does it feel like your journey on the Lost Light has been nothing but a string of embarrassing situations? You can’t take the robot condom from her. That would imply that you’ve been thinking about riding Whirl’s dick which is… not a possibility. Fucking Whirl without the solid reassurance of mecha armor is not a possibility. It’s just not. On the other hand, Velocity has gone out of her way to give you something she thinks might help you. Can you really just turn down a gift? Even a gift you don’t want and will not use? Years of social awkwardness and societal politeness requirements say no, no you cannot.

You take the robot condom and stuff it in a side compartment with an embarrassed “Thanks.”

“If you have any more questions or would like me to send you some information links I can get those-“ the elevator dings and the doors open.

“So sorry, Velocity, I’m already late and Ultra Magnus is expecting me,” you lie, already sliding down the hallway as if distance could save you from your own cringing embarrassment.

“Oh, of course, good luck,” she calls after you.

~

There’s another possibility that this awkwardness with Velocity uncovers, though it takes you a few hours before it hits you. You thought you were being subtle with Whirl, but if you’ve been walking around with robot come on your hands that you somehow could not see then maybe, just maybe, Velocity isn’t the only one who put two and two together.

“You don’t happen to have any jealous admirers or ex-lovers, do you?” You’re sitting with Whirl at the edge of the oil lake in an uncharacteristically quiet moment, throwing bits of scrap as far as you can and watching them splash. If anyone were to ask, you would say that you were just testing the coordination and strength of your suit. It’s the truth, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like the whole truth. You try to avoid thinking about why that might be the case.

Whirl stares at you quizzically. You must be getting used to him because the look doesn’t feel quite as unnerving as it used to. “I don’t do relationships,” he says.

“That’s not really what I asked. And that answer is not as encouraging as you might think it is,” you pick up a bit of scrap metal and toss it as hard as you can out into the lake. Your hud measures the arc and angle of your throw, numbers and symbols scattering through your vision. It notes the ultimate distance travelled and records it. You try the question again. “Is there anyone who might be interested enough in you that they would target me? To get rid of me, I mean.”

Whirl snorts. “Oh yeah, I’ve got bots lining up to spike me silly and they’d all kill for the privilege. You’re lucky you’re so tough, meatbag, nobody wants to risk a fight with you.”

You feel your face heating up. You collapse backwards and throw your arms out dramatically. “You are impossible.”

“And you are so feared that not even my sweet valve is tempting enough to cross you.”

The look you shoot him could burn holes in concrete, too bad you’re still wearing a helmet. “Maybe it’s just not as sweet as you think it is.”

He scoffs and swings a leg up over your waist. “Maybe you should take that helmet off and taste it yourself.”

You laugh in spite of yourself and kick his leg away. “Yeah, right, and get poisoned by your antifreeze pussy? I don’t think so.”

“Coward.”

“I’m just doing whatever keeps me alive.”

Whirl groans, “Sounds like a drag.” It’s not the first time he’s made a comment like that. It’s familiar, but maybe not in a comfortable way. Maybe it hits a little too close to home. You need a change of subject.

You get up and vault over his leg, settling down in the join of his hips. You give his crotch plating a couple knocks. “You gonna open up down here?”

Whirl looks down at you. It’s funny when he does that. The way he’s set up he has to angle his cockpit in one direction so he can stretch his neck around the other way in order to see you. You wonder if it’s as odd to other transformers as it is to you. “Why?” He asks, panels and plating already folding up and away, “Am I getting that taste test?”

You don’t answer him. Instead, you trace your fingers along the opening and consider the way he responds to your touch. Would he even respond the same way if you weren’t candy-coated with extraterrestrial alloys? Is he turned on by friction? By temperature? Electrical current? You don’t know, but whatever you’re doing still seems to be working out for him.

You start with two fingers this time, dipping in lightly as you continue tracing outer folds with your thumb. How does this work? How are you similar enough that you can find this mirror image of humanity on a species so impossibly different from you? It’s not what you want to be thinking about. You’d rather be thinking about the way Whirl moves, the slight revving of machinery, the shifting of plates as they open up, preparing for the inevitable vent of steam as his frame heats up. You sink another finger inside of him and he whines like it’s not enough. Your fingers would definitely be too small for this without the suit. Your flesh too soft and yielding, your muscles not strong enough to dive into him without the back-up of machinery. Right now you’ve got him right where you want him, why would you want to give that up. You add another finger and press inside him. A soft pulse of blue light appears for just a moment before fading away, so soft that you think it might have been a trick of the light. An idea wanders through your mind and you pull up a list of sensor views.

Whirl arches his back and pushes himself down against your hands. “Come on, fleshy, I bet it’ll be sweet,” he gasps, “Just take off that helmet for a minute, get your nasty human mouth right in there. You won’t- ah- regret it, I promise.” You giggle at him, flipping through view types. His tone changes, now harsh and defiant. “Oh, come on, is that all you’ve got, meat bag? Why don’t you frag me like you mean it?”

Who are you to deny Whirl what he wants? Without really thinking about what you’re doing you push back into him, valve sliding down over hour hand up to your wrist. Whirl yelps. You seem to be fisting a giant robot. Well, there’s a first time for everything.

“Oh yeah, meatbag! That’s what I’m talking about!” His voice quivers as he groans, filling you with white hot satisfaction, and you finally land on the sensor view you didn’t realize you were looking for.

You can see what Velocity must have been talking about now. Whirl is positively glowing with energy readings, bolts crackling and spiking and pulsing around your hands. It seeps down your wrist as you pump in and out of him, glowing bright and then fading until you’re back in at the source. It’s actually kind of pretty and you feel your breath catch in your throat. Whirl thrusts his hips again, driving your arm back. You brace your elbow on your hip for traction, pushing deeper into him. Whirl arches his back and you can’t help but admire his lines, the way his form bends, the bizarre grace of all of his movements. You feel your face heating up. You are elbow-deep in alien robot pussy and you’re getting all embarrassed over what? Finding the guy you’re fucking attractive?

Whirl spasms. His legs wrap around you, pulling you into him and holding you there as he flashes and sparks. Your heart beats wildly at the pressure of Whirl’s legs on your back.

Whirl hums happily, “And that is why I like getting spiked by you, fleshy. Nicely done.”

~

Whirl insists on walking back to the shuttle bay with you. He doesn’t know about your paranoid theories, you didn’t have the heart to try and open that topic up again. In the end though that’s why you agree to let him, even if it does feel borderline romantic, like you’re in danger of getting a goodnight kiss. You round the corner into shuttle bay 6 and stop short.

There’s something wrong with your ship.

On Votera in the Coltex nebula there’s a type of bioluminescent land anemone. The species is invasive and grows on any surface exposed to partial sunlight, covering buildings, monuments, and even vehicles that stay in one place for too long. At night, the creatures wave and pulse with a faint purple light, like a garden having a very slow rave. In the few weeks you had spent there, a few of the creatures had popped up in the shadows of your shuttle spot, giving you your very own organic underbody lights. The anemones on your hull withered and fell off a long time ago but something else seems to be having a similar effect on the shuttle now, only this time the lights are glowing bright green. For a brief moment of horror you wonder if this is the grossest message you’ve ever received from a cybertronian. You check your sensor inputs. No, you’re back to default visuals so at least this isn’t a hate message in robot jizz.

“Hey, fleshy, why’s your box surrounded by slugs?” Whirl asks.

You zoom in on the viewscreen without moving any closer to your ship. He’s right, the light is coming from the bodies and trails of a few hundred sluglike creatures creeping along the floor of the shuttle bay. It’s biotech, you’d bet your life on that. Cybertronians don’t use organic biotech.

Your suit chirps with incoming message notifications, apparently the nerd squad has your number. Texts keep flashing up in the corner of your vision only to be immediately replaced by other texts, everyone trying to explain what’s going on at the same time in separate threads. Your stomach twists again. They’re explaining what you already knew about the Weird Thing, telling you that it’s some kind of alien transponder they can’t identify and that it wasn’t sending out any data, until just a few minutes ago.

You look back at the slugs of unknown function and consider these new messages. This is definitely not a coincidence.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all this is like almost twice as many words as in the rest of the other chapters so fuck i sure hope you like them
> 
> thank you so much for all the lovely comments and kudos you leave, especially the comments. I'd be daydreaming about this stuff anyways, but it's the comments that really keep me writing it all down and posting it for you. I love knowing that the silly stuff I write is genuinely enjoyable to actual other human beings on this planet, that is just crazy to me
> 
> anyways, please indulge me as i mess around with gender and hologram stuff later on, i wanted to write about Whirl's wartime holoform (as i imagine her i guess) and also i wanted to write about getting railed by a hot older butch soo ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

This isn’t a brunch. It’s an ambush and you should have seen it coming.

You showed up at Swerve’s with a packet of nutrition chips, a can of something that won’t kill you when you drink it, and a generous willingness to go out without your helmet for a limited period of time, in the name of shared food between friends. Brainstorm showed up with a literal arsenal, a misplaced sense of enthusiasm, and a clear disrespect for this, the gayest of mealtimes. There’s no helping it now, but you can’t help but feel a little bit betrayed. Like you aren’t allowed to enjoy even a simple meal without strange alien technology being thrown at you from every direction. At least in this case it’s from a friendly direction. You know it could be a lot worse.

Brainstorm pats the array of (relatively) small guns laid out in front of you on the table. “It depends on a lot of factors: firepower, accuracy, aesthetic, just to name a few. But you’ll know which one’s right for you when you use it.” You don’t know how you’re going to break the bad news to him. He’s just so pleased with himself. He’s right to be pleased with himself. A few of the guns look like toys made for toddlers, but the rest of them are honestly kind of breathtaking, all sleek lines and incredible color palettes. Who are you to burst that bubble? To diminish such craftsmanship? To point out flaws in this well-meaning plan?

You turn to the real problem in this scenario. Whirl is sitting next to Brainstorm, squeezed in close in the booth across from you looking equally excited and for all the wrong reasons. He’s the issue. He’s the enabler and you think it’s important to hold him responsible. “Whirl, why did you tell Brainstorm that I wanted a gun? I never said I wanted a gun.”

“Of course you want a gun,” Whirl says, “you just don’t know you want a gun.” He nudges a little blue piece towards you with a claw. “Here, try this one out.”

You fix him with a look that says you’re already sick of this nonsense and, thanks to your lack of helmet, you think it actually lands. “I can’t.”

“Well, sure, you can’t fire them here,” Brainstorm agrees, “But if you pick out which ones you think you might like, then we can go back to the lab and you can try them out there, see how they fit.”

“I thought we were having brunch.”

“So did I, fleshy, but you haven’t put a single thing in your weird squishy mouth the entire time we’ve been sitting here.”

“We ARE having brunch,” Brainstorm protests, “Convincing your friends to install more guns is as much a part of brunch tradition as day drinking and irresponsible gossip.” You would disagree with this point, but Whirl is nodding his head emphatically so it looks like you’re actually outnumbered here. Maybe you’ve stumbled on another one of those Cultural Differences between humans and cybertronians.

“Ok, fine, that’s fine, but I really can’t take any of these.”

“Sure you can!” Brainstorm picks up one of the Fisher Price brand blasters. “Here, if you’ve never fired anything before, this one’s easy to handle and easy to use. It’s lightweight. It’s portable. You’re gonna love it.” He flicks a switch and the gun lights up and says something in a goofy cartoon voice. 

You glance up at Brainstorm. “That one feels a bit condescending, actually.”

“People keep telling me that but I just don’t get it.”

You wave that comment off. “Look, that’s not the problem. Do you even remember what Ultra Magnus’ job used to be? The Enforcer of Tyrest is in charge of keeping cybertronian tech in cybertronian hands. You giving me weapons is like, high key illegal.”

“Aha!” Brainstorm looks excited, like he had prepared for this exact argument, “But, according to recent treaties, we have officially opened trade agreements with human organizations on Earth. And in the past we’ve armed individual human allies so they can defend themselves against hostile alien forces. You were clearly targeted by hostile alien organo-technology while under Autobot protection and now you’re more vulnerable to another attack. We have no idea when they might strike again. You should be able to defend yourself and what better way to do that than with our superior weaponry?” He sits back, satisfied with his logical checkmate.

You resent being reminded of how vulnerable you are, but he does have a point. Your shuttle was directly targeted and partially disabled by the glowing slug creatures and you haven’t exactly been feeling relaxed and laid back since then. Your security systems are busted and you need to figure out how you’re going to move the whole thing to a more defensible location. Whatever is out to get you on this ship seems to be getting bolder. It might not be a bad idea to weapon up, and Brainstorm would be the person to go to for all that. It doesn’t really matter, though, because there’s one huge glaring flaw in his logical process.

“That’s a great argument, buddy, but I’m not human.”

“What!?” 

“Excuse me?”

You take a sip of your drink. It’s a dramatic reveal, you’re allowed to savor it before you continue explaining all the fun trivia bits. 

Whirl leans in until his eye is only a foot or so away from your face. “I don’t buy it. You look pretty human to me.”

Brainstorm looks at you like you’re suddenly a new puzzle he has to solve. “Is it… a hologram? A fleshform? Are you remote-controlling this body or are you an even smaller organic creature piloting from inside the human’s skull or chest cavity? Is it a hallucination?”

“It’s a technicality,” you explain, “Legally speaking, I gave up my human citizenship when I joined the Archive project. All the Archived are more legally Odae than whatever the hell species we are biologically.”

“So they could get away with giving you advanced technology without violating any treaties about selling high tech level equipment to species that aren’t ready for it yet,” Brainstorm muses. You lift your glass to him in acknowledgment.

“And,” you continue, “the only reason that the Galactic Council allows the Archive program to keep doing what it’s doing is because the Odae don’t equip us with weapons. Shields and sensors and industrial tools, but no weapons.”

“That’s a load of scrap,” Whirl says, “You don’t have guns but you have weapons. You’ve used that corpse suit’s weapons on me lots of times.”

“I’ve used scientific survey and manufacturing tools on you in very unsafe ways that are not recommended by the manual,” you hold Whirl’s gaze while you let that sink in. “It’s not officially approved, but it’s common enough that it’s not something I could get in deep trouble for. Buying guns from an outside source -especially a mechanical source- is something else entirely. That could get me expelled.”

Brainstorm seems to be deep in thought, hand on his chin, tapping away. If you had to guess what he was thinking you would probably say he was looking for loopholes to weasel through. Whirl seems similarly deep in thought, but you think he’s probably imagining you stabbing a compass in his leg and maybe getting turned on by it. You go to take another sip of your drink.

“What about buying industrial equipment from cybertronians?” Brainstorm muses, “That’s not illegal. We’re on a similar tech level with the Odae, right?”

You narrow your eyes at him. “That’s arguable. I always thought you guys liked to keep that shit on lockdown. You know, Duly Appointed Enforcer of Tyrest and all…”

“Oh sure, but your ship is broken and I’m sure you could use an ionic magnostapler to fix it, or maybe even a quantum drill.”

“I don’t know what either of those things are.”

“They’d come with instructions, of course, easy to read manuals about how to use them and how not to use them,” Brainstorm shakes his head, “So many tools these days can be reconfigured to be very dangerous.” Ahhhhh, of course.

“Well,” you slide the drink between your hands and consider, “I’m not sure what a quantum drill is, but I’m sure mine must be years out of date. If you really think you can improve the design I certainly wouldn’t say no.”

Brainstorm looks like you just offered to give him the moon. “Excellent! Now, are you sure there’s nothing on the menu that won’t kill you? Swerve is very into human culture these days, I don’t know why he wouldn’t have-”

CLUNK. Whirl slams his elbows down on the table, leaning over awkwardly. “Speaking of! What’s up, shorty? Coming over to say hi or does this place have table service now?”

You turn and see the big guy, the bouncer, and right next to him is Swerve with his arms crossed and his foot tapping irritably. Your eyes flick over to one of the many prominent signs. “No guns. No swords. No briefcases.” You look down at the array in front of you, not at all covered by Whirl’s clumsy attempts to keep it all out of sight. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted. You down the rest of your drink, and get ready to get kicked out of another bar.

~

The circle of slug goo is responsible for your malfunctioning ship. You don’t know how it’s doing it, but it’s shut down most of the functions of your shuttle, including the hover mode and the self-parking. You tried to scrub up the goo in the hopes that without a proper circle the problems might fix themselves, but that shit is dried on and it is not coming off. What’s worse is that, after too long inside the circle, your suit starts throwing up error messages and the joints get slow and sticky. You’ve borrowed a few hover sleds and intend to slide the whole thing out of the Bermuda Triangle zone, but you can't work inside the circle longer than fifteen minutes at a time.

“Shit,” your fingers seize up and your helmet pings another mild system error. You backtrack out of the glowing circle and collapse on the floor of the shuttle bay. “This sucks! Organo-tech sucks! I fucking hate my life!”

“Woah, how bout you tell me what you really feel, fleshy?”

You roll your head to face Whirl. “And here I thought things couldn’t get any worse. Now I must be tormented by a helicopter with an attitude problem.”

“Yeah, I’m the one with the attitude problem,” Whirl snorts, “what are you doing on the floor? Hoping I’ll come along and step on you again?” You scramble back onto your elbows just as he sits down in the space next to you. “Chill out, meatbag, I’m only joking. What’s going on?”

You stay prepared to jump up at a moment's notice but Whirl doesn’t appear to be making any more moves towards you so… “The slugs fucked up my ship.”

“I thought the nerd squad got them all.”

“They did,” you sigh, “but the trails are still messing it all up. Can’t fix what’s wrong as long as it’s still in there.”

“Yikes.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Whirl looks at you for a long time and then nods. “Well, looks like you’ve got a lot to figure out right now. Guess I’ll see you later.”

You blink. “What, you’re leaving?”

He hauls himself to his feet and makes a show of stretching. “Yeah, you’re pretty busy here, I should let you get back to it.”

“You can’t just leave me here.”

“Sure I can,” Whirl chirps, “watch me, here I go.” He begins an exaggerated turn towards the exit.

“Wait wait wait, hold on,” you hold up a hand to stop him, “I just got an idea.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and it’s a good one, definitely worth it to stick around,” you look up at him, “do you know how much you can lift?”

~

“Ok, this is the last one and it’s almost in place I swear.”

“It better be,” Whirl grunts, “and this payoff better be incredible.”

“Don’t worry, it will be. Just you wait.” You give the hover sled one last kick to make sure it’s securely in place. It doesn’t budge. “Alright, that’s it, you can let go now.”

“Finally! My claws were starting to get numb.”

You don’t respond to that, but you’re glad to be done with the hard part too. The warning notification is back in the corner of your view screen. “Ok, I’m gonna charge it up so get ready.” You scrabble for the sledge remotes. “This is gonna take a quick hand just to make sure it doesn’t all spin out of control.” You pause for dramatic effect and then flip all the switches at once.

The hover sleds power up with a warbling hum. Your ship shudders and then slowly rises a few feet in the air.

“Alright, it works,” Whirl says, “now, what was the part that makes this all worthwhile.”

“Give me just a moment.”

The switch to the shuttle bay doors is embedded in the wall you parked by, or at least one of the many switches that control those doors. The doors themselves are on the opposite end of the hanger bay, giant technologically wonderful things more than twice Whirl’s height. The mechanisms are sci fi smooth without a lot of clunking and clanking, but it’s not a fast process and the doors are still opening when you get back to Whirl’s side.

“It’s a relatively clear shot from here all the way to the end of shuttle bay five.”

Whirl squints at you like he’s about to ask you what the hell you’re going on about when all at once it clicks and instead he’s staring at you like you just said you’d pay his bar tab for the evening. “No, you can’t be serious.” You nod. “Will it break?”

“Not more than it already is.”

Whirl laughs.

The two of you don’t say anything else. There’s nothing else left to say and everything left to do. You both launch towards the shuttle floating motionless above the faintly glowing green circle of dried slime. Whirl reaches it first and collides with a crunch that sends it lurching forward. You arrive a second later, throwing your shoulders against the hull and pushing as hard as you can. It’s heavy, but the best part about hoverboards is the lack of friction. It’s not long before the shuttle gains speed and you’re scrambling just to keep up with it. You stumble and suddenly you’re airborne as Whirl scoops you up with a claw and drops you on the roof of your home.

Your stomach flutters, your breath catches in your throat. Shuttle bay six is rushing past you, wobbling with the unsteadiness of improvised hovering. You reach your hands up to the sky and laugh and yell and scream.

Something moves in the corner of your vision, just under the error notification that still seems to be lingering. Someone is standing in a doorway across the hanger floor. You turn to see who it is and feel your good mood bottom out.

It’s Ultra Magnus. 

In a fraction of a second, your adrenaline fueled mind notices everything: the look on his face is dismayed and surprised, the datapad he’s holding is grey and red not his usual blue, and he is so terribly incredibly big. In this moment, you know you will remember this image and this feeling until the day you die. You can only hope that death is feeling impatient with you.

With another loud crunch, Whirl leaps on to the shuttle next to you, blocking you from Ultra Magnus’ view. You turn back to the ride ahead but your stomach is writhing in fear and embarrassment and you just feel sick and nervous.

The feeling doesn’t change as the shuttle coasts the rest of the way across the empty bay and crashes into the wall. Whirl cheers and gives you an excited shove. You get up without speaking and turn to meet your doom, face to face. You jump down from the shuttle roof and stagger a bit. The suit throws another warning into view. You blink it away and keep walking towards Ultra Magnus. He doesn’t wait for you to explain yourself.

“What is the meaning of this?” His voice booms across the shuttle bay, a stark difference from its usual deadpan drone. You manage not to flinch too noticeably. At least Whirl must know he’s here now. “Of all the irresponsible actions. Whirl, this kind of harassment is absolutely unacceptable. Are you aware what destruction of the property of an Archived organic could do to the tenuous relationship between the Autobots and the Odae? And if the Archived had been injured?”

Oh no, this is worse. You freeze in your tracks.

“What are you yelling at me for? It was their idea!” Well, at least you don’t have to worry that Whirl would try to cover for you.

“And you expect me to believe that story?”

You’re trying to say something, really you are, but there’s a lot of yelling going on and you feel like you might throw up.

“I’ve done it before,” you choke. Ultra Magnus turns to look at you and the rest of your words almost die on your lips. “Shuttle skating is a fun thing we do downwell sometimes, when there’s enough Archived in one place. The ships are tough, they don’t break easy. I didn’t think it would hurt the walls. I thought it would be fun.”

You don’t hear his response. His mouth is moving but suddenly the words are muffled. In a distant, disconnected part of your mind you think that maybe you’re so afraid to be a disappointment that your ears decided to take a lunch break rather than hear him say anything. You stare up at him, completely motionless, and realize that you can’t move your fingers. No, that’s not quite it. You can feel your fingers wiggle and twitch, it’s the gloves they’re inside. The joints aren’t just slow anymore, they’re locked. And it’s the same in the whole rest of your mech suit. What the fuck.

You glance through the warnings you ignored earlier because you had thought that Ultra Magnus being cranky was the worst thing you would have to deal with today. The windows flicker and glitch as you pull them up. There’s nothing there that would explain why you can’t move, but it does say that your in-atmo communications are shut down which explains why you can’t... hear… oh no.

“Hey?” The word hesitates on your tongue as if afraid to draw attention. It doesn’t, but that only worries you more. You speak louder, “Hey! Hello? Sir, can you hear me?” Your voice rings in your ears and Ultra Magnus does not react. 

You run down your list of systems, trying to find anything that still works. There has to be something that will seem strange, something that will say “please help.” The obvious answer is to open the air vents and yell “please help” in the high tech medium of your human mouth and vocal chords, but the sensors are reading that you’re in a vacuum and refuse to open up. You refuse to panic, but you’re definitely starting to get a little nervous.

Something in the scene outside seems to shift. You can hear Whirl yelling now but you can’t make out what he’s saying. Fuck, you hope he isn’t saying anything stupid right now, the last thing you need is for this to get even more complicated. Something smashes into you from behind and you yelp. You can’t move to break your fall as you’re knocked forward but before you plant your face in the floor something else pulls you back upright. Something, possibly the same something, scrapes along your shoulder blades, tugging at the seams of your armor. Ultra Magnus does not sound happy. Well, you’ve never heard him sound happy but right now he sounds actively angry. It’s probably all the yelling that gives you that impression.

“Sorry, sir,” you say to yourself, “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.” He’s leaned in close to your view screen and is shaking you by the arm. Should you be trying to lipread what he’s telling you? This whole situation is starting to feel more and more like a dream.

And then Utlra Magnus breaks down into pieces and the entire experience is firmly cemented in the surreal.

~

So now you know the answer to the question “what happens when a mechanics-scrambling oregano-tech slug gets caught up in the gears of an Archived level Odae mech suit?” 

The answer is: everything will malfunction, including most of the safety measures, and you’ll have to be manually removed from the suit by the minibot who apparently lives inside Ultra Magnus, who is also technically a mech suit. You’re not sure what to do with all of this hard-earned secret knowledge. At least you’ll have a lot of time to figure that out, now that your armor is completely busted up beyond your ability to repair it. Did that sound like a positive? You’re trying to frame it like a positive, but it most definitely is not.

This isn’t the first time you’ve been cooped up in your shuttle. There are some planets that are more trouble than they're worth to explore so you stay inside. Sometimes you shuttle-hop between asteroids, which can take weeks of just sitting in your little capsule hotel, hoping it’ll get where it thinks it wants to go. Staying put inside your shuttle is not a problem. The problem is that recently you’d gotten used to being out and about and now, unexpectedly, everything has changed. You simply aren’t prepared to have to spend a few weeks completely shuttle-bound. You’re going to be so bored. You can’t even work on fixing your armor, the main hobby you have room for on this little ship. Also, Ultra Magnus has now catfished you twice and you really don’t like the odds of it happening a third time. Please, there is only so much of this nonsense you can take. You cannot handle getting catfished by Utra Magnus three times and you cannot handle weeks of sitting alone in your shuttle thinking about how many time Ultra Magnus has catfished you.

Whirl might be a fun distraction, but he hasn’t messaged you since you lost your suit. It stings a little bit, though in all fairness, you haven’t messaged him either. You don’t really know if you want to. The two of you had a very particular dynamic going and it relied on you being tough enough and reckless enough to be fun for him. You’re not sure it can work without the suit. Without the suit you’re just as fragile as any other human. Easily crushed. Easily killed. Nothing special. A Funtime liability.

It’s fine.

It’s definitely not fine. It’s not fine, but it’s the way things are so you’re just gonna have to pretend it’s fine until your stupid emotions can get with the program.

This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to leave Galactic Council space. You’ll get to Hoxrow and you’ll leave the Lost Light. You’ll thank Ultra Magnus for all his help and apologize for all the trouble you’ve caused. You’ll notify the Archive program that you need a new suit and you’ll look for human-friendly jobs and human-friendly opportunities. You’ll probably never see another transformer again. If you see another human out there in the galaxy you’ll always remember to double check that they’re not a hologram before going up to become bffs. You won’t attempt to cope with the knowledge of your own fragility by fucking unstable murderbots you barely know. You certainly won’t pine over any of these hypothetical murderbots, and you won’t feel sad when they don’t message you to hang out. Maybe you’ll even find a therapist to help you figure out what the fuck is so damn hot about danger, but probably not. The Odae don’t really cover mental health in their insurance packages.

The point is you’ve learned a lot of important lessons here. You’re going to remember them going forward. That’s really the best you could hope for.

~

There’s a woman in a pilot suit rummaging through your things. You never invited her in or opened the door for her, but she’s there all the same. 

You were sitting at your monitor station, watching the view through your security systems (all up and running again, thank goodness) when you heard the drawers open. You turned around. You saw her. You’re still trying to figure out how to react. She looks like she’s lived a hard knock life, maybe thirty or forty years. She’s knocked back at most of those years, if the scars on her knuckles are anything to go by. You watch her from your chair for a while and she pretends not to notice that you’re staring. Her oxygen mask hangs by its straps around her neck, swinging gently as she moves with intense purpose.

“Sure is cramped in here.” She mutters, loud enough to get your attention, as if she didn’t already have it. “Guess it’s perfectly you-sized.”

“What are you doing, Whirl?”

Whirl’s holoform turns a single battle scarred eye towards you and grins. “How’d you know?” You frown at the weird pretense that you might not be able to recognize him, weird new holoform or not. He shrugs. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m snooping around.” He pulls out a packet of powder rations and waves it at you. “What’s this?”

“Technically food.” You watch him dig through your things, unsure of how angry you should be with him. The days of radio silence were pretty rude, but you hadn’t exactly reached out to him either. Besides, what would it even mean if you were angry about that? If his absence had somehow hurt you? You take a deep breath and try to drop that line of thought entirely. “Don’t break anything, ok? I don’t know when I’m going to be able to restock.” You watch him in silence for a few moments more, searching for some way to continue the conversation. “What’s with the new look?”

Whirl tosses the packet back in the drawer and continues digging. “What new look?”

“The new holoform.”

The holoform lets out a bark of laughter. “Oh no, this isn’t a new holoform. She’s the original, slightly updated for style. See the hair?” Whirl’s holoform points to her close cropped turquoise hair and ruffles it. “See, much more convincing.”

He’s not wrong. You know as well as anyone that (lacking any kind of life sign sensors) the quickest way to catch a hologram is by looking at the hair or counting the teeth. This Whirl’s hair looks detailed enough, but you know it’s always been easier for the system to render short cuts than to try and handle the physics of longer strands. You let your eyes wander over the holoform’s frame, trying to pick out other betraying details. She’s fit, muscular in a way that suggests she could pick you up and haul you with her. The uniform pulls tight on her arms and across her back as she digs through more drawers of food packets and emergency rations. It’s not a standard uniform you’ve ever seen but it does look vaguely familiar and- Wait, ‘she’s the original’? 

“Whirl, were you stationed on Earth during the war?”

Whirl doesn’t look up when he answers. “I thought you knew that already.” He pulls out another ration packet, sniffs it, and puts it back. “Yeah, I was there with the wreckers for a bit. Saved Optimus Prime and everything. Big damn heroes.” There’s a bitter edge to his tone but you can’t focus on that as the gears in your head keep churning, trying to connect the dots.

You spin around in your chair and pull up the infonet overtop of your security systems. “Were you involved in an early-on battle in Chicago? Megatron, Optimus, the U.S. national guard all smashing shit up right by the lake?”

“Beats me, meatbag.”

You scroll through pages of search results, scanning the video thumbnails. “Come on, you’d remember. Big city. Big body of water. Big robots. Anything ring a bell?”

“Humans don’t have big cities,” Whirl snorts. You hear him stop rummaging. “The lake sounds familiar.”

Halfway down the second page of search results you find what you’re looking for. You pull up the link and an old news report fills the screen in all it’s hd digital glory. The holoform walks up behind you and leans over your shoulder to watch the talking heads introduce their latest giant alien robot attack footage. The camera view is shaky and the screen shifts to keep the picture steady and centered. It’s smart phone footage of an enormous metal hand braced against a wall of concrete as a decepticon rounds the corner and emerges into view. The video jerks and jostles as the person recording realizes they would rather be anywhere else on the entire world and that the only way to get what they want is to be the change they wish to see. Sirens howl in the distance and are slowly drowned out by the steadily increasing repetition of helicopter blades. The camera swings around and you click pause.

“There!” You point at the picture on the screen, a blurry but still entirely recognizable helicopter.

“Huh, whadaya know.” His face is right next to yours when he speaks. It’s startling. You can feel his presence behind you, around you, strong arms framing your shoulders. He’s not even touching you and you can feel your skin tingling with anticipation. Hell, he’s not even -almost- touching you. The actual Whirl is off halfway across the ship. What you’re getting flustered by is a fucking lightshow that Whirl happens to be using like a sock puppet. The holoform grins with maybe a few too many teeth. “That really is me, isn’t it?” he says and it’s a blessing that you can’t feel his breath on your bare shoulder. “Wow.”

It’s cruel, what you’ve done to yourself by agreeing to be archived. It’s adventure, but the cost is isolation and you hadn’t realized that isolation kills humans slowly. Humans need community and humans need friends and humans need to be held. You haven’t been touched in… how many years has it been? You can’t even remember. You don’t really want to remember. If you had known how hard it would be, would you still have gone? If the Odae had told you that in a few years you would be so lonely and scared that you would feel heartsick longing for a giant murderbot and that even being in the same room as his fake human-like puppet would get your heart racing in anticipation, would you have agreed to be archived? You look back up at the destruction on screen and remember what it was like the first time you saw this video. Fear. Excitement. Mostly fear. The sinking realization that humankind is not alone in the universe and that the galaxy’s other tenants are very big, very dangerous, and don’t always play well with others. Maybe you still would have.

The holoform stops looming over you and goes back to the task of digging through all of your shit. You relax, no longer braced against the terrible hope of accidental touch, but you are going to have to put a stop to this nonsense before he breaks something important.

“What are you looking for, Whirl?”

“Looking for where you keep your armor, fleshy.”

Your shoulders tense again. Ah yes, there it is. The expectation. Something tightens in your chest and you clench your jaw against it. “It’s broken, Whirl. Leave it alone.”

He turns to you with an exasperated look. “Not that one, dummy, I mean the one you came on board with. Armor set originale. You’re too cooped up in here so we’re going out and we’re going retro. Old school. Classic.”

You blink. “Is that why you’re using this holoform? Solidarity?”

The holoform responds with double finger guns and what you assume is a wink. “Bingo.”

That’s… weirdly sweet of him. Very much not what you would expect from Whirl. Your anger evaporates and you’re not entirely sure how to feel now that it’s gone. Tentative, maybe. Wary. “Sorry to burst your bubble then but I don’t have my old armor anymore.”

“Why not?”

Alien politics. A mess of conflicting interests and cross-species power plays. “We can’t just keep getting new armor and survey tools every time our old stuff becomes outdated. We might sell it to someone lower down on the tech ladder,” you grimace, “All I’ve got left is a back-up atmo suit.”

“And you can’t wear that out because…?”

“Cause I’d rather not end up like a meat pancake.”

Whirl nods very slowly, looking thoughtful. He shrugs. “Guess we’re staying in tonight.” There’s a shimmer of pixels and the holoform’s pilot suit is suddenly replaced with a replica of your own tank top and comfy pants. Your breath catches in your throat. That new outfit really does ...showcase quite a lot. Whirl collapses onto your bed and pulls his arms up behind his head, sending his muscles and scars shifting in all sorts of interesting ways. “So, fleshy, what do you do for fun in this little storage closet of a ship?” You’re reeling with emotional whiplash. You don’t respond. Whirl grabs a packet of nutrition chips off your end table and tosses it up in the air to catch again. “Ooh, you’ve got snacks. It’s been a while since I’ve used my mouth but I bet I still know how this works.” 

He opens the bag and grabs a couple of chips. You watch the way he moves his hands, it’s not exactly like he’d be using his claws but the gesture is reflective of it. “Do holoforms even have taste sensors?” You wonder out loud. It’s not really a question and Whirl doesn’t answer. He chomps down on his handful of chips, which crunch up between his teeth before glitching through the hardlight matrix and falling down onto your bed. The crumbs settle on your bedspread and you feel annoyance assert itself in the emotion tangle that is your mind currently. “Hey!” You reach towards him, grabbing for the bag, “You are making a mess!”

It’s not a big gesture. You just meant to snatch the chips away from him and go back to your chair, but Whirl catches your lunge and flips you down onto the bed next to him. Your skin burns where he touches you and you feel as though you’ve left your stomach three feet behind you in this whole situation. 

“Don’t be rude,” Whirl says, “I’m your guest.”

This was a mistake. He’s barely touching you, one hand closed around your wrist and the other one settled of the bed next to your hip, but you feel like you can hardly breathe. Your mind zooms in on those areas of contact and blows them up to occupy your entire brain. It’s not like touching another human. It’s a facsimile. It’s so close. The feel, the texture, the pressure and the softness, it’s almost like what you remember a human’s touch to be like, but there’s an undercurrent. The holoform buzzes with a subtle energy that makes your skin tingle and prickle. It’s unsettling. It’s not entirely unpleasant.

Maybe he doesn’t notice what he’s doing to you. He’s certainly not trying very hard to affect you like this so maybe it’s slipped right past him. You glance up at Whirl to see him staring back at you, eye wide and an open mouthed smile on his face. He knows. Your stomach roils again with nerves and it feels like you might actually die of embarrassment. But death by embarrassment has never saved you before and you don’t really expect this time to be any different. The universe has never been that kind to you. Whirl moves his hand to your hip and you try to supress the shift of your legs and the hitch in your breath. The grin spreads across his strange human’s face. 

“Slag, fleshy, you’ve really got it bad, don’t you?” His other hand releases your wrist and moves to explore touching your face. You manage not to press your face into his touch, but only just barely. His thumb traces your lip. “You gonna open up that mouth for me?” No. You’re not going to do that. You’re not going to respond to his question and give him an opening, either. You fix him with a stare that you hope is more confident and bored than you actually feel. His hand slips up under your shirt and he presses his knee between your thighs. You gasp and he slips his fingers inside your mouth and presses down against your tongue. He tastes vaguely sour. It’s stupid and silly and shouldn’t be as hot as it is. Whirl laughs a short breathy little laugh, “It’s wet. I mean, I knew it’d be wet but it’s really wet. Holoform’s got all these human parts but none of them are so wet.” He leans down and licks up the side of your neck with an electrifying jolt. You let out a choked little gasp at the feeling. “See what I mean?” 

You do see what he means. Your skin is hot and dry. The track he traced from collarbone to ear faintly tingles but it’s not wet. That’s certainly interesting. Would it be so bad to see how this might play out? You already know the answer, of course. If you want to stay in control you’re going to have to put a stop to this.

Instead, you hook your leg around his waist and pull him down on top of you at the same time you close your mouth around his fingers and suck. You had hoped for some kind of reaction, of course, but it is truly eerie to be so close to Whirl when he gasps in delight. You feel his chest as he breaths, hear the supposed hiss of air but you don’t feel even a whisper of that breath on your skin. It’s not something you have long to think about though as he falls on you with a recklessness you’ve seen before but never fully experienced like this. His whole body moves against you, wrapping you in corded muscle and ridged scars and soft flesh that is not flesh but light that folds around you and fizzes against frayed nerves. He’s sloppy and his technique might be lacking but it’s been far too long and Whirl’s hips move with a ferocity you can’t remember ever feeling before. There’s a strange passion you can’t help mirroring, an intensity that leaves you absolutely breathless.

You can hardly get him off of you long enough to peel off your shirt. Every inch you gain is quickly overwhelmed by another full body surge as Whirl moves to fill any space you might have created between you. You try to tell him what you’re doing but his fingers keep finding their way into your mouth and you can’t talk around them. It’s ridiculous, really, but it’s intoxicating as well. Somewhere in the scramble he finally realizes what you’re trying to do and backs off so quickly that it feels like he’s just disappeared.

Whirl pulls off his shirt and moves to toss it on the ground, the garment explodes in a shimmer of 3-d pixels as it leaves his hand. You go to remove the tangle of your own clothes and when you look back up again Whirl is standing there in a sport bra and the biggest turquoise strap on that you have ever seen in your life. You’re pretty sure that wasn’t there a moment ago.

You glance down at the monstrous thing. “Are you expecting to use that on me?”

Whirl grins, “You like it, fleshy? I’ve learned a lot about how human sex works these past few days.”

“Yeah, not enough,” you squeak, “That’s way too big.”

Whirl looks down at the dick with a puzzled expression. “What? Don’t humans stretch?”

“Not that much. Not that quickly.”

He fiddles with something around his hip and the hologram dildo shrinks a little bit. “Better?”

“If you’re trying to beat me to death, maybe.”

Whirl sighs in frustration and downsizes again. “How’s that?”

You consider the new size. “Almost doable.”

“You’ve gotta be joking! Smaller than this? What even is the point?” The dick shrinks further. Whirl looks for your response.

“It’s a bit on the big side-” 

“Argh!”

“I said it’s a bit big but it’ll do fine with some lube,” you let your legs uncross and wave him forward. “Now get back over here!” 

He’s on you again in the blink of an eye. It’s different with so much of your skin exposed to him. The strange touch of the holoform crackles over every inch of your skin. When you get him slicked up and inside of you it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Whirl doesn’t kiss you, but he buries his face in your neck as his hips rock with a fierce rhythm that drives the breath from your lungs in short, gruff moans. You wrap your legs around him and try to keep up with his whirlwind pacing.

It’s not like it was fucking him in the armor. Everything’s too raw, too exposed. He’s supposed to be the one feeling spread out and vulnerable while you hide behind a shield of tech and fuck him til he’s screaming in pleasure. You’re supposed to keep it all at a distance. Most of the fun is in watching him get carried away, in watching him lose control and lose his cool and wriggle and writhe under your hands. You’ve let him turn the tables on you. Now you’re the one making noises and faces while Whirl uses this physical lightshow to fuck you within an inch of your life. What is he even getting out of this whole setup? You’re not sure if holoforms have any kind of pleasure sensors included.

Whirl grabs your hips, lifting them up off the bed to thrust into you at a different angle and you can’t hold on to that line of thought anymore. You loosen your grip on his shoulders and move your hand down to rub between your legs. He fucks you rough but steady and, all things considered, it doesn’t take much time before all that pressure builds to a breaking point and you’re muffling your cries against the scars on his collarbone. Whirl’s hips keep moving as your tremors trail off and you collapse with muscles quivering.

One of your arms is still wrapped around him as he slows his pace and goes to pull away from you and your heart is gripped by a sudden panic. You’re not ready for him to go. You’re not ready not to be touched anymore. You don’t know what to do. It’s not like you can just ask him to stay and cuddle with you. He’d laugh. He’d say no.

You pull him back and flip him over so you’re on top. It’s surprisingly easy to do. Any mass he might seem to have is all an illusion, you guess. Light doesn’t actually weigh anything. Whirl looks up at you, confusion plainly written on his face. You lean down and trace your tongue along his collarbone. He must have some sort of sensors set up in this thing because as soon as you make contact he gasps and arches his back. You tug down the shoulder straps of his bra and move lower with your tongue’s exploration, following the swell of his breast and ridges of old scars until finally closing your mouth around his nipple. Your lips tingle and you wonder if they're in danger of going numb. Maybe eventually they will. That’s something you don’t mind exploring further.

Whirl’s hips give a shallow thrust and your legs shake with the overstimulation. It’s too much, really, but you wiggle your hips in response as you gloss over his nipple with your tongue, willing him to take the bait. Come on, Whirl, it’s all so sticky and wet, don’t you just want to keep going? Don’t you want to keep touching the messy hot human until you’re both too slick to function?

He does, of course. Of course he does. You’ve got his number exactly and as long as you keep your mouth and tongue moving Whirl’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the next chapter might wrap this story up, but it could be that i'll have to split in two parts so i guess we'll see when i actually start filling it all out
> 
> thanks again for all of your patience and kind words and i hope this chapter has been worth your while as well


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this from my phone again so formatting might be bad actually and I may or may not get that edited if/when I have access to a big boy computer ever again in my life

You wake up to the sound of muffled sirens and your day doesn’t get much better from there.

The first thing you notice is that your communications are down. The tablet by your bed throws up an error message when you try to contact Ultra Magnus and nothing you do seems to fix the issue. You send him a few dozen texts anyways and hope he won’t be too annoyed with you when the system comes back online and they all flood through.

The second thing you notice is that your security systems are running on back up. The images aren’t as crisp. The audio is fuzzy. It takes you a moment to realize what it all means because it’s not something you’ve experienced before but you’ve read all the manuals. Something big happened while you were asleep, something that knocked out not only the Lost Light’s communications but also the main power for your entire ship. Clearly the Odae were prepared enough to equip you with safety measures that kept you alive and didn’t even wake you while doing it. But the sirens are still blaring so it’s not like this is nothing.

You pace the few steps of your living quarters back and forth and back and forth. There’s nothing for you to do, really. If there’s an emergency going on out there you ought to stay put where you are. This is the first place anyone will come to look for you if you’re needed or if the crew needs to make some kind of mass exodus. Sure, you might want to go out and try to help, you might want to be of some use in this time of crisis, but honestly what would you be able to do? You don’t know what kind of emergency is going down out there but if a crew of super advanced alien robots can’t find a way to fix it there’s probably very little you could do to help out. Not to mention, anything that’s dangerous enough to warrant warning sirens for these giant alien robots would probably kill you in a heartbeat. 

You’ll be safest if you just stay put in this lovely little box you have. The box has very thick walls that will not crush you under any circumstances, and temperature moderation in case it gets too hot or too cold, and a fixed atmosphere that keeps all the oxygen in a handy spot where you can actually use it. Still, even backup systems and failsafes can malfunction. Your eyes drift to the stripped-down atmo suit sitting in its “open in case of emergency” box. This probably qualifies as an emergency, right?

The hiss of the vacuum seal as the helmet settles over your head is just as comforting as you hoped it would be. It’s still not quite enough to keep you from pacing the floor and checking security every half a minute, but at least you’re not going to throw up from the panic.

The shuttle engines seem to be offline as well, which doesn’t mean much since the shuttle bay doors are still firmly closed so it’s not like you were going anywhere. Your shuttle isn’t equipped for deep space travel anyways, that’s why you’re in this mess in the first place. Still, knowing that you can’t escape is unsettling, even when the only “escape” available is the equally unpleasant prospect of starving to death alone and unreachable in the endless void. You’re contemplating the various possible bad futures ahead of you when something catches your eye on the security footage. A grainy, pixelated form approaches from one of the hangar bay doors.

It’s Whirl. It’s Whirl and something has happened to him. You haven’t seen his actual body in days, but he’s clearly been in a fight and the injuries look fresh. There’s a score of paint missing from his hip and a black laser burst on his shoulder still trails a bit of grey smoke. The strange and mysterious emergency suddenly seems a lot more dangerous. You’re up and standing in the open doorway before you even realize you’ve decided to open the door.

“Whirl! What’s going on?” 

He hesitates with his claw in mid reach for the door. “Oh, hey fleshy,” his frame is venting steam and his voice is strained and buzzing with excitement. “Nice suit!”

“What happened to you? You look like hell.” The words come out harsher than you had intended them to be, but that’s just the way it is sometimes. It is a fucking emergency, you might be a little on edge.

“You should see the other guy,” he chuckles. You’re about to respond to that (joke? Is that what it was?) when Whirl collapses to the floor in front of you. It’s not uncontrolled. It’s not like he passes out or like he’s reached any kind of physical limit. It’s systematic. It’s mechanical, almost like when you’ve seen him transform. That’s partially what it is, you think. His legs fold away underneath of him and his cockpit is leveled on your front doorstep but it happens so fast it’s a little unsettling. The front windshield folds up and away and he gestures to one of the futuristic looking seats inside. “Hop in, meatbag. We gotta get moving.”

Under different circumstances you might have told him to get lost. You might have slammed the door in his face or at least taken half a minute to ask him what exactly was going on and ask in what dangerous situation would it be advisable to leave the safety of your bomb-proof little box. Instead you scramble up the steep incline and strap yourself into one of the bucket seats.

Whirl is already standing up and closing around you by the time you get the buckles all fastened. It’s snug, maybe even cozy if you wanted to be weird about it. You try not to think about how you’re literally inside him and how different it is from the other times you’ve been literally inside him. 

You clear your throat. “So, you gonna tell me what’s going on?”

“Alien invasion. No big deal.” There’s something that looks like it might be a speaker system on the bank of dials and instruments in front of you, but he’s also patched into the comms system in your helmet, speaking directly into your ear. He sounds calm and unworried.

“Oh yeah, sure,” you mutter, “alien invasion. No big deal. Must be a Wednesday.” You sigh and try to calm the twisting in your stomach. Whirl’s not freaking out, which means this must be fine, right? No. That’s absolutely not what that means. Whirl’s not freaking out, which means this might not be a complete disaster, but you still ought to get a second opinion. “So, where’s Ultra Magnus.”

There’s a pause and maybe it’s nothing and maybe it’s not, but it makes you nervous either way. Then Whirl says, “Can’t take you to Ultra Magnus, fleshy.”

That doesn’t make much sense. “Why not?” Next to Ultra Magnus seems like the best of places to be when threatened with an alien invasion. It’s likely the only time when all his disapproving energy would be focused on the flying saucers without parking permits, letting you slip quietly under the radar for a bit.

“Ultra Magnus can’t help,” is Whirl’s clipped reply.

“What do you mean Ultra Magnus can’t help?” You’re getting annoyed with these unhelpful responses. Annoyed and nervous. You think it’s starting to show in your voice.

Whirl is also annoyed with you. You can definitely hear it. “I mean if there was an alien invasion do you really think Ultra Magnus would send me to help you unless he was completely out of options? “ he snaps. “You think he wouldn’t come over himself unless he was in way over his head?”

You take a moment to think through what Whirl just said. You try to imagine a situation where Ultra Magnus would decide to send Whirl to pick you up. Sirens blaring. Guns blazing. Aliens invading. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“So, it’s really serious out there?”

You see Whirl’s huge flashlight head nod above you. “It’s serious.”

You want to ask if Ultra Magnus is alright, if he’s going to be alright, but Whirl probably doesn’t know the answer to that anymore. Things change in battle all the time. It’s been long enough and anything could have happened. Besides, what if the answer is… not good.

You take a deep breath to calm down and instead ask “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to a magical place where all your dreams come true. Just hold tight, meatbag, we’re almost there.”

 

~

The labs are dark when you finally arrive. The dim glow must be coming from security lighting, unless someone turned on the mood lights setting in here before booking the fuck out when the alarms started sounding. You can still hear the faint echoes of alarms coming from down the hallway, but the lab doesn’t seem to be affected. There are machines and instruments still whirring away in alien inscrutability.

It was actually relatively easy to find the Not-a-Gun that Brainstorm was making for you. It’s the smallest vaguely gun shaped object in the entire room. Even then it’s still a bit hard for you to handle without the power suit, and there’s one other problem.

“I don’t think I can fire this thing from inside your cockpit.”

“Why not?”

“It’s partially projectile based.”

“You got something against shooting out my windows?”

“I’ve got something against hurting my friends when it’s not necessary.”

Whirl makes a weird noise that might be a laugh and might be a scoff. “Yeah, like when you bolt welded me to the wall and I had to tear off a fin to get away.”

That’s not exactly fair. He’d definitely come at you first to “test your reflexes.” It’s not your fault that your reflexes were better than he expected them to be. But this is an argument you don’t want to be having right now so you bulldoze right through it. “What if I ride on your shoulder?”

He eyes you like he wants to keep arguing. He could if he wanted to. Riding on his shoulder solves the glass issue, but it also puts you at risk of falling off or getting hit or getting in the way of his range of motion. You’re scrambling to come up with solutions for those problems and counters for his arguments when he nods.

“Yeah, that’ll work.”

~

You don’t know how your helmet cracked. Couldn’t say exactly which knock to the head finally jarred something loose, all you know is that you’re gasping for breath and things are starting to go fuzzy.

“Slag, fleshy? Hey fleshy? You ok?” At least the attacker must be dead, if Whirl’s finally noticing you’re down.

“Helmet-“ you cough, “I c-can’t-“

Something smells like sulfur. You can feel your heart pounding in your chest, it’s a strange feeling. You’d laugh if you had the oxygen to spare but you don’t. You think you might be laughing anyways. Those breathy giggles sound awfully familiar.

“Hey! Stay with me, meatbag!” You feel Whirl’s claws wrap around you and lift you up off of the floor. You lash out instinctively against his grip, something deep in your brain certain that you will be crushed but he’s holding you surprisingly gently. “Alright quit your squirming, I got you.” The world tips and rushes around you. It turns on its side. Whirl drops you on the chair in his cockpit and the glass slides shut. “Hang on.” His voice is faint and tinny through the speakers. “I can fix this.”

The suit feels like it’s closing in on you. The helmet constricts around your head and you fumble with the latches. It doesn’t feel better when you get the thing off and toss it to the floor. You’re seeing things now. That’s a symptom of oxygen depletion right? Yeah probably. Everything is shifting around, swirling and opening up and…

You feel a soft breeze against your face. The air isn’t cool but you’re sweating and it feels nice. You take a deep breath and don’t cough for the first time since this whole ordeal started. You take another deep breath. The world starts to spin back around the right way. A few breaths later and you almost feel like a person again.

The vents in the cockpit around you are new. You certainly didn’t see them before, but here they are, surrounding you with a lovely little bubble of breathable air.

“Still there, meatbag?” You look up to see Whirl gazing in at you, neck craned down, eye almost pressed up against the window pane between you. You give him a thumbs up. “Alright, I’m gonna get us out of here. Hold tight.” You feel him begin to move. The lurching sensation of his walk is faster this time, but not quite a run.

“How did you do that?” You croak.

“Huh?”

You make a vague gesture towards the vents. “The oxygen.”

“Oh. You know, I had to behave like one of your helicopters back on Earth. Right down to the internals.”

“Yeah but how?”

“What are you, a cop? Mind your own business.” It’s hard to tell from inside him but you think he shrugs. “Don’t think I can explain the ‘how.’ You don’t really have the right body to get it.”

“It’s incredible.”

“It’s alright.”

You laugh weakly. “Well, it did just save my life.”

Whirl doesn’t answer.

The atmosphere suit feels tight around your neck. It clings like a ghost trying to strangle you. It’s not doing much to help you anymore so you undo the fastenings and peel it off down to your waist. The tank top underneath is slightly damp with sweat and you shiver as you settle back into the pilot seat. Your skin sticks a bit to whatever material the seat is made of and you’re suddenly very aware of how intimate this situation is. You’ve never actually touched Whirl before. 

You’re lightheaded, still a bit dizzy and not really thinking as your hands move against your thighs in an absent minded kind of way. It takes a moment for you to notice the anticipation building between your legs. You push your knees together and press your body back into the seat. The open window of his chest frames his movements and- fuck, if you could just hold out for five minutes maybe you could get a hold on yourself but your mind keeps running in circles around how you just almost died horribly and how it’s the first time you’ve ever really touched him. Every step he takes jostles you against his insides and maybe that’s not a sexually charged scenario for him but you can’t seem to get your mind off the tracks of immature innuendo and it’s embarrassing how much it’s affecting you. You want to tear off the rest of your jumpsuit and rub yourself off against the steering stick between your legs. You want to lay back and nuzzle into him and touch yourself until you come inside him. You want to get him sticky. You want to fog up his windshield with your breath.

Instead you pick nervously at the seams of his seat and tap against the knobs and dials you don’t know how to work. You wonder if playing with them would do anything, if this is a way to control him or if it might end up feeling anything like enticing.

“What’s going on in there, fleshy?”

You roll your eyes with a small laugh. “What are you, a cop?”

“Feels like you’re getting handsy. Watch where you put those things.”

“Why? Am I distracting you?”

“Does almost getting killed turn you on or something?” He asks. You don’t answer but you do feel your face warming up. In the silence an engine revs somewhere underneath the seat. Whirl chuckles. “Yeah, I guess I already knew the answer to that question, didn’t I?” He shakes his head. “No reason to hold back now, meatbag. If you wanna touch your weird gooshy bod in my cockpit then go for it.”

You snort. “Ok, pro tip: if you’re going for seduction, stay away from the word ‘gooshy’ understand?”

“Sure, sure, I’ll stick to the classics next time. You know, atmosphere malfunctions, alien invasions, and other life threatening scenarios.”

Ok, now it’s a challenge. You kick your feet up on his console and spread your legs, slipping a hand between the layers of jumpsuit and underwear. Not really touching yourself, not at first. Just resting. “You could just say you want me to come inside you. That’s nice and straightforward.” There’s a shudder, a full body quaking that runs through the mechanisms around you. You look up at him. Alright, so that’s not nothing. The cloth of his seat pulls at the hem of your shirt as you sink further into him and press your hips up against the palm of your hand. “So you do like that.”

Whirl doesn’t answer your teasing comment, but he did just give you permission to make things weird. You might as well work with that.

You start slow, letting the rhythm of his movement rock you. Hips move first, just slightly, keeping in time with his footfalls. Then your hands begin to press more insistently, stroking occasionally, feeling the beginnings of arousal through a layer of fabric. You throw your head back and close your eyes, focusing on feeling him around you, focusing on feeling your own body, focusing on where the two of you meet. It’s not like when you’re alone. He’s so undeniably alive underneath you, you could never pretend this was just like touching yourself at your shuttle console. You let out a soft moan, arch into the motion of your hands. Maybe you’re performing a bit more than you would otherwise, but damn it still feels good.

The fabric of the jumpsuit is bunching up uncomfortably underneath you so you scramble upright to push it off your legs onto the floor. Your tank top follows soon after. You buckle yourself into his straps as you settle back down again, just to feel that extra bit of security, just to feel that extra bit of contact. Maybe he can even feel it better this way. You nuzzle your face into the strap over your shoulder and bite down.

“Slag, Ok fleshy, you win” you feel him slow to a stop and find somewhere to hunker down. Hopefully somewhere safe. The worry that you might get caught or attacked again barely even registers in your mind. He’s watching you now. You don’t even need to look up to know he’s watching you. You can feel his gaze burning against your bare skin and you know that gleaming yellow eye is hovering above you, staring with unmatched intensity. He stares as your fingers play over your body. They know exactly how to move, expertly teasing sensitive skin, pulling and twisting at nerves half hidden by the fabric of your underwear. If he wants a better view he’s going to have to ask you for it. You wonder how long it’s going to take before he gives in.

There’s a grinding sound and a jolt of his cockpit that has you bracing yourself against his dash board by your feet. Whirl’s moving again but he’s not walking anywhere. You look up to ask him what’s going on and the question dies on your lips as you meet his gaze. His look is hungry, fascinated, unsettling. You feel a rush to your stomach and clench your thighs tight around your moving hand.

“Are you-“ you begin, but your voice is too quiet and you need to try again. Loud but aloof. Not too eager. “Are you touching yourself right now, Whirl?”

He groans. His eye closes and his head sinks down to tap the glass of his windshield.

“No,” he finally answers, “not really built for that anymore. But I make do.” That sound, that movement, he must be grinding against something. You smile and let your body mirror his movements. His eye reopens a fraction and slides over you like an oil slick. “You wanna give me a better view?”

You had decided to make him ask for it first… “Say please.”

“Fleshy, I am begging you,” the speakers around you are buzzing with anticipation, “I gotta see how you touch yourself. Get weird and wet in me. Please.”

Ok, that counts. Strange wording maybe, but this is Whirl after all and your heart is still racing as you lift your fingers up to your mouth and softly wet them. His eye shifts and twists like a camera zooming in as you slide your underwear off one leg. You let the garment hang off your other ankle, draped over some dial on his dash that you don’t know how to read. You spread yourself slowly under his watching eye and sink in, allowing yourself a slightly louder than usual moan. Whirl’s cockpit lurches again and the rocking picks up speed as you thrust into yourself.

It’s like masturbating on a roller coaster. Or maybe it’s more like masturbating in one of those flight simulator rides. Or maybe it’s just one of those unique experiences that’s kind of hard to compare to anything else. Lounging inside a giant robot, riding your own hands three knuckles deep as he watches you and fucks himself on whatever surface he’s found to rub off on, completely exposed and at the mercy of his atmosphere seals (which may or may not be up to snuff, he’s a helicopter not a space ship.) It’s not something you’ve ever really dealt with before. At least you aren’t getting motion sickness.

You know how to get yourself off. There’s generally a lot of time to practice that alone in a capsule shuttle. You can tell you’re getting close when it hits you that you’re going to come under the burning stare of that unblinking yellow eye. Well yeah, duh. What else did you expect? You don’t really know, but the vulnerability of the situation hits you so suddenly it knocks the breath from your lungs. You could stop. He doesn’t have to see. But you can’t. You’re so close you know you can’t make yourself stop now. The only thing to do now is to see if you can make him blink first. So, instead of looking away when you feel that tension building, you stare right back at him and keep staring. You stare into that watching yellow eye right up until the final release has you straining against his safety straps and rolling against him in a sweaty, sticky, spent mess of satisfaction.

There’s a sort of choked buzzing sound that comes from Whirl’s speakers and his cockpit tips forward. You slide a little limply down the seat before coming to rest against his straps and steering stick. If you weren’t buckled in you’d have been dumped onto your face against his windshield. The pressure feels nice, so even though you’re absolutely spent you gently wrap your legs around the console and press your hips forward. The cockpit shudders and Whirl gasps. Your stomach flips over again.

“What did you say?”

“Harder, meatbag! I said pull that harder! Mash the buttons a bit maybe just-“ his voice cuts off with a moan as you pull the controls back toward you as hard as you can. It doesn’t look like it’s doing anything, but it sure sounds like it is.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” You ask. You trail your thumb over a button and press down. “Like, is this really doing anything?” He doesn’t answer but when you pull back again the moaning buzzes again through the speakers. The shaky movement of his body stutters and for a moment you think you feel the seatbelts tighten around your body.

There’s a hard crack above you. Whirl’s head hits the glass of his windshield and the sound reverberates inside the cockpit. His eye is almost closed, barely a sliver of yellow light shining out from the darkness. For a moment it isn’t focused on you but another tentative pull on the control earns you a soft groan and reluctant attention. He takes his sweet time finding your gaze. You smile up at him and wink. Whirl closes his eye again and relaxes with a shudder of satisfaction.

~

“Who were they, anyways?” You ask. “The people trying to kill us, I mean.” The two of you still haven’t moved, which seems like a strange choice tactically speaking, but you’re sure Whirl needs the rest.

“Does it matter?” Well, you probably could have expected that answer.

“It kinda does. I want to know whose ports I can’t visit anymore.”

“Pfft, go with the flow meatbag you don’t see me getting all twisted up about making enemies.”

You roll your eyes at the bravado. “Yeah, well, you’re a big guy with big guns and thousands of years of military experience behind you.”

“Millions.”

“What?”

“Millions of years of military experience.”

You pause to consider that. “Fuck, my dude, that’s a long time.” Too long. It’s stretching out into a vastness that’s making you feel a little uncomfortable. Is your fuck buddy older than your entire species? That’s … unsettling. The people who want to kill you are a safer topic. “Did they look a little like Galactic Council types to you?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” Whirl sounds impatient with you again. “We should get moving.” Of course, he’s the only one who can do anything about that now. He stands up, the rolling motion is almost familiar to you now, as is the rhythm of his walk as he takes you wherever the hell you're going now.

You don’t ask for his opinion on the aliens again for a long time. You sit and think. You sit and think about what the ones you saw looked like. You think about what the Galactic Council tends to look like. You think about how the Galactic Council feels about the Odae Archival Project and about how they feel about cybertronians. You think about how territorial they are about “lesser” organics, such as yourself, and how they might react if they somehow learned of lesser organics hitching rides with hated technologics.

“Whirl,” you start cautiously, “do you know why they’re here?”

“What?”

“The aliens. What do they want?”

“Huh? Why would I know that?” Does he sound defensive? “Who can even tell? Meat brains are ridiculous.”

You frown. “Why did you come to get me, Whirl?”

You think he shifts, there’s a slight change in the rhythm of his walk. “I was trying to keep you from getting smooshed, gooey guts. Is that a problem now?”

“My shuttle is a pretty safe place to be, Whirl. Why were you so sure I wouldn’t be safe there?” He doesn’t answer. “Are they looking for me, Whirl?” The silence that meets your question isn’t an answer, but it might as well be. “Is it theGalactic Council?”

Again, Whirl doesn’t answer your question and again that’s enough to give you exactly the information you need. The Galactic Council knows who you are. The Galactic Council is targeting you specifically as a traitor against organic life.

“Oh I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad?” You choke, “Whirl, I can’t be on a galaxy’s most wanted list! I don’t have a deep space capable ship! I don’t even have a power suit anymore! And if the Galactic Council has already blacklisted me then the Odae might have to expel me and then I’ll never get that back.” You’re dangerously close to hyperventilating now and you force yourself to take deep breaths. “I will be stranded.”

Whirl is quiet as you try to pull yourself back together. As you try not to spiral out at the beginning of the end. As you try to convince yourself that maybe things will be ok actually. You can’t do it. You’re already living in the worst timeline where the Oligarchs in the Archive Project have brought you back to the Odae home system for review. You already see the vague shadow of interested disappointment as they explain the treaty arrangements with the Galactic Council and the reasoning behind your expulsion. Your shuttle is already being repurposed for some better, more grateful Archived prospect. You’ll never wear a suit of power armor again. 

It’s unreasonable. You know you’re spinning. You know this isn’t helpful. But you’re exhausted and you just can’t seem to stop.

“Listen, fleshy, I don’t really do the whole comforting thing. It’s not really what I’m good at but-“

You never learn what Whirl was going to say, what comforting or less than comforting thing he thought might make you feel better, because at that moment the wall to your left completely explodes. You scramble around for the Gun That Isn’t for a moment before realizing it isn’t anywhere to be found in the cockpit. You must have left it behind when your helmet broke. It’s just as well because Whirl’s windshield staying unshattered is now important for your continued survival as well.

You scoot forward on the seat. “Whirl, can I use your guns?”

He’s already running towards the silhouettes of the GC through the smoke. “You think you can handle that firepower?”

“I can try.”

“Be my guest, squishy. Just try not to get me shrapnel-stuffed.”

“Probably wouldn’t go well for me, either.”

Whirl laughs and you brace yourself to actively fire on Galactic Council forces and seal your fate as an Archived Project reject. His claws meet GC meat and armor with a crunch that shakes your entire body and rattles through your bones. You grasp his cannon controls and line up shots on his targeting systems. The first one goes wide. The second one hits a GC giant in the knee and they go down. Whirl is cackling, the sound of it rises above the din and surrounds you in the cockpit.

“That’s enough!”

The voice cuts through the chaos and almost knocks the wind from your lungs. Whirl barely slows down his manic dismantling of the GC soldier in front of him. Strange colored gore spatters the glass around you as you see Ultra Magnus shouldering his way through the smoke and the crowd of GC troops. None of them turn to attack him, he’s not even pushing very hard to get them out of his way.

What. The fuck. Is going on.

“Whirl?”

Whirl looks up. 

“Ah, slag.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me (writing a sex scene with seatbelts): safe sex is Very Important my dudes


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A diplomatic incident and a death wish, oh my

Verity Carlo’s helmet smells like the inside of an old mustang that’s been kept in someone’s garage gathering dust for about ten years. Dust and gasoline. It shouldn’t smell like either of those things, but it does, and you wonder how long it’s going to take before you’re able to go back to your cozy little shuttle box and sleep away the recent excitement. It also might be nice if they allowed you to even pretend like you have a say in negotiations, considering that the negotiations have at least something to do with your entire fucking future. But whatever. You get it. You need to be at least 15 feet tall to ride the diplomacy train.

You almost wish they’d just open the airlock you’ve been stored in and vent you out into space. Instant freeze dried human. Of course, that would require paperwork and some sort of cover up and would be generally inconvenient for everyone involved. Perish the thought, you’d really hate to be an inconvenience. So until your fate is determined, you’re stuck being sullen in the no-man’s-land corridor between the Lost Light and the Glory of Antirro. At least you’ve got internet access again.

You’re playing mindless games on the tablet you’ve been left when Ultra Magnus comes in. Well, technically he’s Minimus Ambus. Out of armor and out of authority. It’s deeply unsettling. The impulse to jump to your feet fights against your immense apathy and longing to never move from your spot ever again. The apathy wins out and you lean your head against your unarmoured shoulder as he shuts the airlock door behind him.

“Wanderer,” he approaches. You don’t know what to say and for a moment he stands there, awkwardly, as if your life wasn’t falling apart and as if you hadn’t dragged him down into a mess of red tape along with you. The edge of the helmet digs into your skin as you watch him.

“Who was she?” It’s not the question you thought you were going to ask. Judging from his face, it’s not the question Minimus thought you were going to ask either. “Verity Carlo. She’s the girl your holoform is based on, right?” He nods. “So, who was she? Why do you still have her armor in storage?”

Minimus looks awkward just standing there. You can tell this is not where he wanted this conversation to go but he doesn’t quite know how to deflect, as if he’s worried you’ll just keep picking at this subject no matter what he says. You’re not that invested, but there are certain topics you desperately want to avoid and it’s easier to steer the conversation when Minimus is off balance. 

“She was a stowaway.”

Oh, that’s not what you had expected. Granted, you’ve seen what she looks like and you probably wouldn’t have clocked this girl as high ranking military or a diplomatic official or anything, but a stowaway? This girl who clearly means so much to this stuffy, rules-lawyering, beaurocrat of a robocop was some kind of ship-hopping vagabond?

“Huh.”

Minimus does not fidget or shift on his feet. He makes no uncontrolled movements as you consider the fact that this bot’s favorite human was a rules breaker, at least on some level.

“I’m here to inform you of the decision made by our meeting with the Galactic Council diplomatic team.” Of course, right back to business.

“Is it a death sentence?” You ask blandly. “Please tell me it’s a death sentence. I am so done with waiting around.”

He sighs and you don’t know what function that serves him as a robot that doesn’t breathe, but it must do something. He sits down on the ledge next to you and leans back, stiffly against the wall. He’s so small. Not compared to you, he’s still taller than you, but compared to literally everyone else in this damn place. He’s even smaller than most of the other minibots, in a lot of ways. You’d ask him about that, about how it feels to be so small all the time, but it would probably be very rude. Besides, you already know how he does it: high tech stilts.

“You are not in trouble, wanderer,” he finally says and you are confused. “The emissary of the Galactic Council finds you free of all guilt.”

You turn to stare at him directly. “Free of all guilt,” you repeat, unsure if you’ve heard him properly.

“Your part in yesterday’s mayhem was determined a kidnapping,” Minimus explains. Ah yes, yesterday’s mayhem. What an apt term. What superb fucking phraseology.

“A kidnapping.” Incredible, you’re basically a fucking parrot right now. Minimus might as well be having this conversation with a tape recorder. Come to think of it, it’s possible he has had conversations with tape recorders before, maybe that’s another one of those things it would be rude to say.

“Yes, understandably you cannot be held guilty but,” he pauses as if he’s about to say something distasteful, “it is also clear that you cannot remain on the Lost Light.”

You could have seen it coming, should have seen it coming. Should have predicted this turn of events the second you set foot on a technologic-aligned ship. It still feels like a sucker punch. Your impulsive “Why?” moves faster than you can bite it back. It comes out harsh but tired. You already know the answer.

Minimus shifts uncomfortably. “The treaty arrangements between the Archive Project and the Galactic Council are very clear on this subject. Had I known the regulations, I would not have offered you transport.”

That certainly would have saved you a lot of awkwardness over the past few weeks but it doesn’t really help you now. “They’ve already tried to kill me, sir.” He looks like he’s about to protest so you continue without giving him the space, even though deliberately speaking over an authority figure is churning up all the nervous butterflies in your stomach. “The biotech could have gone after anyone or anything in this entire ship. It could have disengaged the engines, letting the GC catch up with us. It could have gone for command systems or comms systems or security systems. It could have gone after anyone in the crew, considering how much the Galactic Council hates all mechanicals and you guys specifically. But they went after my suit and my shuttle. They went after the systems that I need in order to survive. And that was before my ‘kidnapping’” -you use the air quotes you feel the word properly deserves- “when I fired on their soldiers directly. Do you really think they’ll let me live after that?”

To his credit, Minimus looks genuinely shocked, as if he hadn’t thought of that particular conclusion of events. “Harming you would be in direct violation of the Galactic Council’s Archive Preservation Agreement.”

“Which only matters if the Archive Project ever hears from me again and learns of my unfortunate death situation. At which point, there isn’t much they can do to help me out,” you sigh, and something releases in your chest. A deep tension of fear resolves. That was it. That’s the best case scenario. It’s even worse than expulsion from the Archive Project in some ways. “Maybe they can make me a cautionary tale for the other Archived. Really hit home that you shouldn’t accept rides from strangers.” You laugh. Minimus looks shocked but you’re too involved in this hilarious new idea you’ve thought up. 

It’s not a bad one, you think. If you’re really about to die for a few silly mistakes in the grand petty theater of alien politics then maybe you can at least send a heads up into the void. Maybe someone would even hear you.

“The emissary for the Galactic Council said there was no way to get in contact with the Archive Project. Not in time for a decision to be made. Is this true?” You barely register Minimus’ voice and it takes you a moment to respond to his question.

You shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Had the GC even secured the door on their end of the airlock? Why would they need to? You’re certainly not a threat to them.

“Perhaps I will try to contact the Archive Project anyways,” he offers. It’s a nice gesture, but your mind is elsewhere, tapping at feeds and probing the limits of your connectivity with this tablet.

You have a feed connect and a camera and an electronic lock picking app if it becomes necessary. You have enough of a suit not to suffocate, the implied approval of another troublemaking human who messed around in affairs much bigger than any human should. And you have the careless, reckless attitude of the soon to be doomed. You have everything you need and, once Minimus Ambus leaves your airlock for his piles of paperwork, you will have your opportunity.

~

Transcript of Archived livestream (username wanderlost):

“Hey there, everyone. Longtime lurker on the Archive comms but this is the first time I’ve ever posted anything before so uh… I guess we’ll see how it goes.

“This is kind of a public service announcement I guess, a bit of a warning video meant to keep y’all safe. Um, just a heads up though, I’m gonna be doing something very dangerous here and uh… I may or may not survive.

[sounds of an airlock cycling]

“So, as you can see behind me, we’re in an airlock right now. And I’m currently in a kind of unconventional uh… armor situation. It’s on loan. It’s from a friend. That’s actually part of what I wanted to tell you about today. About a week ago there was this biotech infestation that really messed up my shuttle and ended up completely destroying my armor. Nasty stuff. And right now I’m gonna try and find some of it again so I can show y’all what to uh, look out for.

[airlock cycle completes]

“Yeah so I am ... going on board the ship where the tech came from and I’m gonna try to find it. Wish me luck.

[airlock door opens and there is a shift in ambient noise]

“So, if you look around here you’ll see it looks sort of like many Galactic Council ships do. That’s because these assholes are GC, or they’re a faction of the GC at least. I don’t know the exact relationship. I’ve been kept in an airlock and told basically nothing.

[ambient ship noises, speaking resumes at 00:15:76]

“Oh! Look at that! It’s my ship! Y’all I was worried I would never see this beautiful baby again. And it looks like… yep, there they are. Ok so, last time I saw my shuttle it was free of slugs but now it’s been moved onto Bastard Ship aka the Glory of Antirro and wow! It’s covered in nasty biotech again. Let’s get a good look at these guys. See that? That’s something to look out for. That’s what we in the business call ‘bad fuckin news’

[electricity sparking]

“See that?! See?! Bad news.

“Okay, so we’ve seen the bad slugs. Honestly didn’t think I’d get this far. Should we try to find someone in charge? Let’s see if we can find someone in charge.

[ambient ship noises, speaking resumes at 00:24:38]

“I don’t really know where I’m going but I think-“

[background footsteps]

[whispering] “oh shit!”

[footsteps approach]

[whispering] “Can you see them yet? 

[footsteps fade]

[still whispering] “Big fuckers, slight variation on central space Galactic Council uniforms, but once you look close enough it’s obvious, right?

[ambient ship noises, speaking resumes at 00:37:45]

“Oh! This looks like something! Doesn’t this look like something? The seat of authority.

“Hey! Uh, hi there! It’s me, the person you’ve been trying to murder!”

[Unintelligible]

“Excuse me! I’m talking to you!”

[GC officer into comms] “I’ll call you back, the Archived is making a fuss. [to wanderlost] What are you screaming about?”

[wanderlost] “Yes, thank you, I was just wondering when you planned to kill me? Will it be tomorrow, execution style? Or will I have to wait until your slugs short out my temperature controls and I freeze to death in a sub zero hangar bay? Are you even going to take me to Hoxrow? Because that’s where I was planning to go and I’d really like to make it there in one piece within the next century please.”

[GC officer] “Exactly what are you trying to accomplish with this outburst, Archived? A quick death?”

[wanderlost] “Is that a threat?”

[GC officer] “I don’t make threats to bugs.”

[wanderlost] “Oh, you’re a real big scary guy, aren’t you? I’m really impressed. Can’t fucking hack it against Odae technology so you sabotage it to get at the little pests inside, is that it?”

[GC officer] “You know you would have been safer if you’d accepted Galactic Council protection in the first place.”

[wanderlost] “Safer from who?! From you?”

[GC officer] “Is that all?”

[wanderlost] “No that’s not all! Your slugs are still on my ship.”

[GC officer] “And?”

[wanderlost] “And if they short out the systems I won’t be able to breathe.”

[GC officer] “Unfortunately, the Archive’s shoddy technology is none of my concern.”

[wanderlost] “If you’re going to let me die you might as well get your hands dirty you big ugly coward! What are you afraid to mess up your fancy gloves?! Fucking come at me-“

[mic impact]

[end transmission]

~

In the end, almost two thirds of the Archived ended up watching at least part of your livestream as it aired. You even got a supportive comment thread from Terminatrix Rex, herself. More importantly (from a diplomatic standpoint) the live feed reached enough of the Odae in Archive Project administration that someone actually answered Ultra Magnus’ helpful calls to find out what’s going on. By the time you had been knocked off Captain What’s-his-face’s desk, your borrowed data pad smashed into oblivion, the Odae were already moving to grant you passage on the Lost Light and sue the GC for damages sustained on your behalf. You survived the fall and managed to scramble back to the first airlock before you realized the scope of the vengeance party that had descended on the GC and you were no longer in danger.

Then it was back to being shuffled around and having things arranged for you by arguably benevolent aliens who had paperwork to do and supposedly your best interests at heart. But at least you had done something. And at least you were still alive.

There was a lot being arranged and a lot of waivers for you to sign. By the time you were done with it all, your shuttle had been moved back to shuttle bay 6 and your eyes were burning from the effort of reading the fine print. You almost don’t meet anyone in the hallways as you make your tired way back home, but when you turn the second to last corner outside shuttle bay 6 there’s someone standing at the end of the hall.

Whirl turns like he’s thought better of continuing into the hanger bay and stops short when he sees you. You feel uncomfortably exposed in the hand me down helmet and shuttlebound lounge clothes you’re wearing. He’s seen you in less, but that thought definitely doesn’t help and it definitely doesn't make you feel better about this situation. Whirl waves at you a little awkwardly and clears his throat.

“Hey there, squishy, it’s been a while.”

“Hasn’t been that long.” It’s been just over a day, you think. Hell, he ignored you longer than that when you lost your armor.

Whirl doesn’t answer. The two of you stand frozen on opposite ends of the hallway, neither moving for what feels like an eternity.

“Ultra Magnus doesn’t know I’m here,” it’s so awkward when he says it and so stupidly obvious. Of course Ultra Magnus doesn’t know. In what world would he allow this?

You shake your head and decide you might as well rip the bandaid off before this conversation gets infected. “Why did you lie to me? When the lights were out and you came to pick me up, why didn’t you just tell me what was going on?”

Whirl rolls his eye at you, “Cut me a break, I never lied.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t come with you unless you said that Ultra Magnus was dead?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No you just implied it and I didn’t want to-“ you cut yourself off and take a deep breath. You don’t want to be arguing with him. The debate over who said what and what was implied is a distraction. You’ve got shit to say. Important shit he needs to hear. You take another breath and steel your nerves. “I would have gone with you if you told me the truth.” Whirl freezes in place, all sculpture, no reaction, “I mean it, Whirl. I still would have done it.”

“You would have agreed to fight if you knew from the start they were Galactic Council?” He asks, an air of disbelief in his voice.

“I did at the end, didn’t I?” You shoot back.

“And if you’d known they just wanted to fight for the pleasure of being your taxi service?” His tone is acid, you’ve never heard him like this before, “I’m sure you’d have been happy to jump ship then.”

“What the fuck, Whirl? I trusted you. You showed up on my doorstep in the middle of a cataclysm and I didn’t even think twice about trusting you with my life. I was -and still am- completely fucking vulnerable here and you’re acting like I’m-“ something in what he just said hits you and your stomach turns over. “Whirl,” you start, trying to choose your words carefully, “you thought that I was going to leave the Lost Light for the Glory of Antirro?”

“Is that what their ship is called? Stupid name.”

“Whirl.”

He looks nervous for the first time during this conversation. Nervous and tired. “I thought you might leave early. I thought you might want to.”

He’s twitchy now. Whirl isn’t one for Feelings, you know enough about him to know that. This is… a big deal, actually, and he won’t thank you for pushing the point. He was scared you would leave him. It’s enough to know that without saying it out loud, without forcing him to say it. Your stomach twists itself up and you try not to feel overwhelmed.

“Do you wanna go to the oil lake?” You ask and somehow you keep your voice completely steady. “I was thinking I might grab some nutrichips and maybe take a nap on the ledge.”

Whirl hesitates a bit before he picks up the thread. “In that sorry excuse for an exosuit?” He asks, “Come on, fleshy, are you even trying not to die anymore?”

You shrug and continue heading towards your shuttle. “Honestly, Whirl? Sometimes I’m not really sure.”

~

You didn’t think Whirl could be careful with you. Back when you had a full power suit you hadn’t really wanted that from him. Still, he surprises you with it. The dynamic between you two has definitely changed now that you can’t exactly tussle like you used to, but you still manage to have fun. You find Brainstorm’s Not-a-Gun and pick up practicing with that. You can still toss rocks and scrap pretty far into the oil lake with Verity’s exosuit gloves. You fit perfectly in the pilot seat of Whirl’s cockpit.

Slowly (but maybe not as slowly as you would have expected) you begin to think of Velocity’s super helpful gift. Whirl laughs when you finally bring it up with him. He rolls his eye and jokes that you’re tough enough to take his spike without mass-displacement if you really put your mind to it. You disagree, but it’s nice to hear him call you tough. He goes along with it, anyways.

There’s rules in place. You’re still relatively delicate here. You’re on top. He doesn’t touch you, especially not once you get going and especially-especially not with those claws. He watches you from a half reclined position as you slip the shield over his spike and turn the dials down to something you can handle. The barrier buzzes under your fingers with barely contained spatial anomalies. It’s weird how physics can be so sexy.

You have to climb up his hips to get yourself in position. He’s so big it’s hard to get a good angle. You clutch at the magnetic hand holds attached to his waist (his idea, since you’re not tall enough to reach his turrets when he’s sitting like this) and ease back.

“Yeah, yeah, take your time, fleshy. It’s not like I’m getting tortured out of my mind here or any-” your foot slips and suddenly Whirl’s spike is sunk to the base inside you. You steady yourself, breathing hard. It’s not bad, but he’s shuddering and even that slight movement is shaking you almost unbearably.

“Calm down,” you say and you’re not sure exactly who you’re talking to. You slide your other leg down over Whirl’s hips, like you’re seated on a ledge of some sort. Your feet don’t reach the wall he’s propped against so you can’t get leverage on that. But if you grip his waist with your feet and hold tight to the magnetic clamps with your hands you can slide right off him. His spike drags slickly against your insides and you feel a tremor in your leg. A steam vent opens somewhere above you and you hear the soft hiss of Whirl’s satisfaction.

It’s not easy to get into a rhythm. It’s hard work and it’s nothing like anything you’ve really done before. It’s difficult, it’s exhausting, it’s incredible. Your fingers cramp from gripping the magnetic holds as tight as you can. Your legs feel like jelly all the way through. The buzz from his spike and the robot condom and the general machinery of his body it enough to drive you wild but not consistent enough to push you over the edge. You feel a curve of cold metal cup your thigh.

“Hey!” you yell, pushing the claw away from your delicate human flesh parts. “What did I say about that?”

Whirl groans and pushes himself off the wall to collapse backwards on the floor. This dramatic show pulls you forward, hands still clutching tightly to his waist. You lose your leverage but he’s making up for it with a desperate thrusting of his hips. It can’t be doing much for him. The friction is barely there but the angle presses the vibrations of his body into your sensitive nerves. You lean forward, pressing your head against your hands as a whine of pleasure escapes your lips. His waist flexes beneath you and you feel the urge to lay a soft kiss there. Your legs begin to shake from the stretch. Whirl thrusts and you hold on as tight as you can to keep from slipping off him. You feel tight, stretched to bursting, and you might be. You press yourself closer to those vibrations with soft subtle shifts of your hips. Pushing. Pushing yourself closer, and closer, until finally it breaks and spills through you and the tension in your legs is overwhelmed by the tension of your release.

You hold onto him as he continues to thrust, desperate and needy. You even manage to lean back and help him with the friction until he comes. You watch him when he does. There’s no bulge in your stomach, but you almost think you can see a faint glow, like a flashlight being pressed against the skin of your hand. A little jolt of static runs up your spine and you shiver again.

Whirl doesn’t get up, just lies there occasionally twitching underneath you.

“So, did you like it, or..?”

Whirl laughs weakly and shrugs. “It was alright, I guess,” he teases, “You sure you don’t wanna fist me one last time before you go?”

You snort. “And risk losing my hand? No thanks.”

“Coward.”

~

You can’t stay forever. You almost wish that you could, but the Archive agreement still can’t allow for an indeterminately long stay of an organic Archived on a cybertronian vessel. Their accords with the GC simply wouldn’t allow it.

The swirling cities and lakes of Thion C loom through the viewports of your shuttle as you pilot it out of shuttle bay 6. It’s the third planet the Lost Light passed in the Hoxrow Quadrant, so you’re already pushing your luck, but it’s the first one they intend to stop at and if you want to make it through customs for small squishy organics, this is where you have to get off. You’d feel bitter about it, but at the moment you’re so swept up in the shimmer of gleaming clouds and ships that your heart is overwhelmed with the thrill of finally getting to fly again after so long.

You’re not a thrill seeker, not usually. You expect that you’ll try to live a relatively boring life for a while now, after the excitement of the past few months. It’ll be a nice change of pace and really, you should treasure it while it lasts because you can’t imagine that you’ll never see the crew of the Lost Light ever again. And whenever that happens, you’re gonna have to be ready for things to get exciting again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to all of you, this is the longest complete thing i've ever written in my life? and it's just incredible to have people who actually enjoy reading it lol  
> im so sorry i havent responded to all your comments, i am a very awkward dork, just know i appreciate every one so much im kinda just like :V all of the time


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